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/ 



BIOGRAPHICAL, 



IITERARY, AND PHILOSOPHICAL 



ESSAYS 



CONTRIBUTED TO THE ECLECTIC REVIEW. 



By JOHN FOSTER, 

Author of Essays on "Decision of Cliaracter, Popular Ignorance, and 
Christian Morals." 



WITH AN INDEX OF THE PRINCIPAI. SUBJECTS, PREPARED FOR THIS EDITION. 




NEW- YORK: QJ 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 200 BROADWAY, 



PHILADELPHIA: 
GEORGE S. APPLETON, 148 CHESNUT-STREET. 

1844. 



LUDWIG, PRINTER, 

70 & 72 Vesey-st. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. Chalmers's Astronomical Discourses . . . . 13 

II. John Home Tooke 54 

III. Coleridge's Friend 88 

IV. Fox's James II 113 

V. Edgeworth's Professional Education .... 147 

VI. British Statesmen . . 173 

VII. Lord Kames j«. . . 199 

VIII. Defence of the Stage . . ^ 217 

IX. Benjamin Franklin 231 

X. James Beattie 249 

XI. Fashionable Life, . . . . . . . .265 

XII. Hugh Blair 275 

XIII. David Hume 288 

XIV. Philosophy of Nature 303 

XV. Ireland .' 317 

XVI. Epic Poetry 332 

XVII. Superstitions of the Highlanders 339 

XVIII. Ecclesiastical Biography 35S 

XIX. Spain 370 

XX. Modem Egyptians 390 



PREFACE. 



^* The Eclectic Review was commenced in January, 
1805, by a number of gentlemen, of whom William 
Alers Hankey is believed to be the only survivor. Their 
object was to provide an antidote to the irreligious spirit 
which then pervaded the periodical press of the country. 
Episcopalians and dissenters were united in its early 
conduct ; and for some years it maintained an absolute 
neutrality on those ecclesiastical points wherein they 
differ from each other. To such an extent was this 
neutrality observed, that some historical questions of 
general interest, and of great importance, were designedly 
avoided, lest they should lead to the expression of opi- 
nions which by implication might be deemed incompatible 
with it. An illustration of this is afforded in the review 
of Macdiarmid's British Statesmen, where Mr. Fos- 
ter remarks, in reference to the lives of Strafford and 
Clarendon — 



Vlll. PREFACE. 



" ' By the principles of our undertaking, we are pledged 
not to advance any opinions on the grand controversy be- 
tween the religious establishment of our country and the 
dissenters from its communion ; — or more precisely, we 
are engaged to avoid discussing the abstract propriety 
of an establishment, and also the propriety of that form 
of it now existing in the country. These are ques- 
tions, it is true, quite distinct from the conduct of the 
established church, or any of its distinguished members, 
as political agents in the transactions of a history. Viewed 
in this light, their operations, their influence, their vir- 
tues, or their vices, are just as fair subjects of observation 
as those of any other of the agents, involved in our na- 
tional history. But it is not certain that we can exercise 
our right to this undoubted extent without giving consider- 
able offence. Even at this liberal period, there are some 
whom it would be hard to avoid offending, and in whose 
opinions we should scarcely seem to preserve our pledged 
neutrality, while condemning the violent and fatal intoler- 
ance of the church during the reigns of the Jameses and 
Charleses, though it be evidently impossible to discuss 
the merits, or even to narrate the events of those reigns 
without it.' 

" It was however ultimately found impracticable to 
continue the compromise involved in the original constitu- 



PREFACE. 1X» 



tion of the journal, and the Eclectic Review therefore 
became the avowed advocate of those principles of eccle- 
siastical polity which are held by the Congregationalists 
of this country. 

" Mr. Foster's connexion with the Review commenced 
in 1806, his first paper being pubhshed in the November 
number of that year. From that period to the close of 
1818, he was a stated and frequent contributor; after 
which he remitted his labours in this direction, furnishing 
only thirteen papers from 1819 to 1828 inclusive. On 
the journal passing into the hands of the present editor, 
in January, 1837, he made application to Mr. Foster for 
literary assistance, and was authorized to announce him 
as one of the stated contributors to his work. The im- 
paired condition of his health did not however permit 
him to do much. An occasional article was all which 
could be looked for, the fastidiousness of his taste concur- 
ring with the cause just named, to indispose him to 
frequent composition. His last contribution appeared in 
October, 1839. 

" Writing to the Editor, January 28, 1841, Mr. Foster 
says : ' With my want of memory, and miserable slowness 
in any sort of composition, I am very many degrees below 
the mark for any thing of material account — any thing 
requiring much reading, or laborious consideration. As 



X. PREFACE. 

to long reading, my eyes have their vett) ; and if I had 
read any considerable book, I should, when I closed it, be 
just in the plight of Nebuchadnezzar with his dream — 
minus the resource of having any one to call in as a sub- 
stitute for Daniel/ 

" The Editor has taken no liberty with his author save 
in the way of omission. He felt it to be incompatible 
with the reverence due to departed genius. Had these 
papers been reprinted during the life of their author, 
minor alterations would probably have been made, and 
some passages might possibly have been re-written. The 
loss of such revision, may be matter of regret, but we 
should condemn, as the height of presumption, any attempt 
on the part of another to supply its place. The produc- 
tions of such a mind bear too distinctly the marks of their 
parentage to require the corrections of other men. The 
case is different with omissions. Many of Mr. Foster's 
papers include large quotations from the works reviewed, 
the greater part of which has been excluded from the 
present reprint, with such connecting remarks as the 
extracts required. It has been the object of the editor to 
select what is of intrinsic worth ; and he has greatly erred 
in his judgment, if the contents of these volumes will not 
be deemed a valuable contribution to our sterling and per- 
manent literature. As compared with the republished 



PREFACE. XI. 

papers of some eminent living reviewers, tliey may be 
wanting in tha.t finish which their personal superintendence 
has secured to their productions ; but in all the higher and 
more permanent qualities of intellect, in their largeness of 
view, penetrating subtlety of thought, deep insight into 
human nature, and sympathy whh the nobler and more 
lofty forms of spiritual existence, they will be found 
eminently worthy of the genius of their author, and sub- 
servient to his permanent repute." 

T. P 






* The foregoing Preface was written by Dr. Price, 
the present editor of the London Eclectic Review, for 
the work as issued by him in two octavo volumes, which 
contsLin Jifty-nine of Mr. Foster's critical articles. As it 
was determined to commence the republication in this 
country with a portion only of those dissertations, sufficient 
to form a duodecimo volume, the twenty Essays which 
follow, were selected for the diversity and interest of 
the topics ; their congeniality to American readers ; 
and as exemplifying the mental and moral characteristics 
of their renowned author, the friend and associate of 
Parsons, Hall, and Jay. 
New-York, July 27, 1844. 



ESSAYS, 

BIOGRAPHICAL, LITERARY, AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



I. 

CHALMERS'S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

Discourses on the Christian Revelation viewed in Connexion 
with the Modern Astronomy. By Thomas Chalmers, D.D., 
Minister of the Tron Church, Glasgow. 

If infidelity is so busily and zealously intent on its purpose, 
that no means of offence against Revelation can be too incon- 
siderable to be eagerly seized for the use of the warfare, it 
may be conceived what a value will be set on any reinforce- 
ments that can be obtained from the dignified resources of the 
sublimest science. If the pettiest quibbles, if witticisms, 
smart or dull, or the lying wonders of popery, or Chinese chro- 
nology, or the virtues of Mahomedans and Pagans, are all 
welcome for the array against Christianity, what proud exulta- 
tion may well be felt at the view of any possibility of engag- 
ing "the stars in their courses to fight against" it! 

Any possible result of this ambitious attempt, maybe await- 
ed by the believer in Christianity, with perfect tranquillity. 
He stands on a ground so independent of science, that nothing 
within the ■possibility of scientific speculation and discovery 
can essentially affect it. A train of miracles, attested in the 
most authoritative manner that is within the competence of 
history ; the evidence afforded by prophecies fulfilled, that 
the author of Revelation is the being who sees into futurity ; 
the manifestation, in revealed religion, of a super-human 
knowledge of the nature and condition of man ; the adaptation 
of the remedial system to that condition ; the incomparable 
excellence of the Christian morality ; the analogy between 
the Works of God and what claims to be the Word of God j 
2 



14 Chalmers's astronomical discoitrses, 

and the interpositions with respect to the cause and the adhe- 
rents of religion in the course of the Divine government on 
the earth :— this grand coincidence of verifications has not left 
the faith of the disciple of Christianity at the mercy of optics 
and geometry. He may calmly tell science to mind its own 
affairs, if it should presume, with pretensions to authority, ta 
interfere with his religion. 

He may content himself thus to repel the arrogance of sci- 
ence, when it intrudes in the spirit of a proud and inimical inter- 
ference. But if, in a large and enlightened contemplation, it is 
found that science comes to be in harmony with religion, and 
even to subserve and magnify it, such tribute and alliance are 
by all means to be accepted. All wise men will protest 
against that feeling which some good men seem willing to en- 
tertain, as if the more limited and exclusive a thing religion 
could be made, the better ; a feeling which may have some- 
times been heard to utter itself in expressions like these : 
" Beware of losing your religion in those delusive vanities to 
which you give the denomination of enlarged views, sublime 
contemplations, and the like. What have we, or our religion, 
to do with the universe, or its fancied inhabitants ? The busi- 
ness of religion is the salvation of our souls ; and if we are 
duly attentive to that concern, we shall have no time or in- 
clination for vain speculations about the economy of other 
worlds and races, about the moral condition of people in the 
stars." It is easy to reply, by remarking, that the amazing 
fact, placed within the evidence of our senses, of the existence 
of a countless and inconceivable multitude of w^orlds, each of 
them of a magnitude to w hich ours is but an insignificant ball, 
cannot be thus lightly disposed of, but demands a sentiment 
corresponding to such a fact ; that, as one Being has created 
and sustains them all, they may rationally be conceived to con- 
stitute one system, in the sense of being formed and arranged 
on a scheme which combines them all in a relation to one 
another, in reference at least to an ultimate effect or object 
which they are co-operating to accomplish ; that, if any prin- 
ciples or illustrative phenomena of this grand union can be 
descried, they are obviously available for the lofliest purposes 
of religion ; that, whether they can or not, the amazing vision 
of the universe simply, in its mere mass and infinity of magnifi- 
cence, tends mightily to exalt our conception of the Divinity ; 
and that, therefore, to affect to render so much the greater 



Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 15 

homage to the principle and purpose of religion, in regarding 
the grandeur of the universe as quite foreign to it, would more 
justly incur the suspicion of contractedness of intellect, than 
claim to be regarded as a concentration of piety, too intent on 
the personal interest of religion to go so far abroad in imagina- 
tion. 

In this series of discourses, it appears to be quite as much 
the eloquent author's object to co-extend the truths and feel- 
ings of revealed religion, with the demonstrations and specula- 
tions of astronomy, to the utmost vastness of its field, thus at 
once giving the amplitude of the science to religion, and the 
sanctity of religion to the science, — as to defend religion 
against the objections attempted to be drawn from the dis- 
coveries of astronomy.* 

* This topic, especially in this latter view, has been treated at consider- 
able length, and with great ability, by the late Andrew Fuller, in a chap, 
ter entitled. The Consistency of the Scripture Doctrine of Redemption 
with the modern opinion of the Magnitude of Creation, in his book. The 
Gospel its own Witness. In that chapter are to be found, in a brief con- 
densed form, several of the arguments and illustrations so ingeniously and 
splendidly amplified in the discourses of Dr. Chalmers, and it may be re- 
commended to accompany the study of the Doctor's work. Very forcible 
in argument as that essay is, in parts it appears to us, nevertheless, to be 
marked with the characteristic defects of the strong and excellent writer, 
— a want of comprehensive expansion of thought, and an unwarranted 
positiveness in assumptions and inferences. Throughout the discussion, 
it is evident the writer has a most inefficient conception of the magnifi. 
cence of the Universe. The idea does not in the least either elate or 
overwhelm his mind. There is no earnest, exulting, still confounded, still 
renewed endeavour to go out in contemplation of the stupendous and 
awful vision ; no amazement or rapture at this manifestation of the im- 
mensity of the creating and sustaining power ; no full impression of the 
demonstrated and almost infinite insignificance of this planet, as a material 
object. He admits, in terms marked by no emphasis, and betraying no 
delight, that there may be probability in the theory of "a multiplicity of 
worlds, inhabited by intelligent beings," but seems unwilling that proba- 
bility should have its full effect, for he throws in, for the purpose of coun- 
teraction, the loose and not very pertinent remark that, "it is an opinion 
that has taken place of other opinions, which in their day were admired 
by the philosophical part of mankind as much as this is in ours." — Even 
setting aside the idea of inhabitants, and a moral economy of so many 
worlds, he no where uses language implying any thing at all approaching 
to a proper recognition of the plain facts and certainties of modern astrono- 
my, as to the mere extent of the Creation. It may be suspected that he 
had a degree of horror of so vast a contemplation. 

If we are correct in these remarks, it follows that the acute author was 
not well qualified for the discussion, since he could not be adequately 



16 Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 

The first half of the performance, however, keeps in view 
the argument against Christianity, which "does not," our au- 

Bensible of the extent of the difficulty, as arising from the stupendous 
magnitude of the Universe. For the extent of view that he takes, he 
reasons with great force, and some parts of his reasoning will justly ap- 
ply to the subject in the amplest view in which it is possible to contem- 
plate it ; but in estimating the whole effect of the essay, we are constrain- 
ed to feel that millions of worlds, or rather millions of systems of worlds, 
are not to be wielded by that kind of short straight forward logic, by 
which the excellent author was so successful on some subjects. 

His facility and confidence of assumption are shown in some most un- 
qualified, unhesitating assertions, (in the way of interpretation of, or in- 
ference from, some passages of Scripture, of uncertain extent of meaning,) 
that the attention of the whole intelligent creation is occupied with the 
condition and salvation of the human race : and the assertions are made 
in that easy tone in which we pronounce an ordmary and unquestionable 
truth which involves no manner of difficulty. 

It appears to us one of the most obvious characteristics of Mr. Fuller's 
mind, that he was but little sensible of the mystery of any subject, or of 
the difficulties arising in the view of its deep and remote relations, — or if 
we may use the fashionable term, bearings. To a certain extent, and 
that unquestionably a respectable one, he apprehended and reasoned with 
admirable clearness and force ; and he could not, or would not, surmise 
that any thing of importance in the rationale of the subject extended be- 
yond that compass : he made therefore his propositions, his deductions, 
his conclusions, quite in the tone of a complacent self assurance of being 
perfectly master of the subject : while in fact the subject might involve 
wider and remoter considoi-ations, not indeed easily reducible to the plain 
tangible predicaments of his rough, confined logic, but essential to a 
comprehensive speculation, and very possibly, of a nature to throw great 
dubiousness on the judgment which he had so decidedly formed, and 
positively pronounced, on a too contracted view of the subject. 

The last paragraph but one of this essay, or section, affords a striking 
example of the cool confident facility with which this respectable author 
could sometimes dispose of the most mysterious and awful subjects, by the 
help of a false analogy. Observing that the final misery of the wicked is, 
as a part of the Divine Government, satisfactorily accounted for on the 
principle of the necessity of an example of justice, for the contemplation of 
God's other intelligent subjects, even though there should not be so many 
of them as to inhabit a multiplicity of worlds, — he adds, that neverthe- 
less that part of the Divine Government is placed in a still more satisfac- 
tory light, if it be true that there is such a vast population of the universe, 
for that then the disproportion may be so much the greater between the 
nuqfiber of the beings who eternally suffer, and the number cf the other 
beings who are to benefit from those sufferings : insomuch that " to those 
who judge of things impartially, and upon an extensive scale, this final 
perdition will appear to contain no more of a disparagement to the govern- 
ment of the universe, than the execution of a murderer, once in a hun- 
dred years, would be to the government of a nation." 

Jt is very wonderful how so acute a writer should deem such a compari- 



Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 17 

thor says, "occupy a very pre-eminent place in any of our 
Treatises of Infidelity, but is often met Avith in conversation ; 
and we have known it to be the cause of serious perplexity 
and alarm in minds anxious for the solid establishment of their 
religious faith." 

" This argument involves in it an assertion and an inference. The 
assertion is, that Christianity is a religion which professes to be designed 
for the single benefit of our world : and the inference is, that God cannot 
be the Author of this religion, for he would not lavish on so insignificant 
a field such pecuhar and such distinguishing attentions as are ascribed to 
him in the Old and New Testament." 

To meet the objectors in the fullest, boldest manner, but 
also with the further and higher purpose, no doubt, of aiding 
the mind in its apprehension of that Spirit who is the sovereign 
possessor of all existence, the preacher commences with a 
magnificent view of the Modern Astronomy. Great indeed 
may well be the dismay of those religious persons who dread 
and detest being disturbed in the indolent quietude of their lit- 
tle homestead of thought, the narrow range of ideas which can 
be surveyed without an effort, — at hearing it demanded that 
the theory of religion be expanded to the compass of taking 
account of the Universe, a scene which, whatever may be its 
limits, is, as to the human power of comprehension, much the 
same as infinite, antl demanded for the plain reason, that reli- 
gion being the intellectual apprehension and the moral senti- 
ment due to God, and this idea and sentiment being justly re- 
quired to correspond to the whole of the manifestations which 
that Being has made of his glory, the lustre and immensity of 

son adapted for a triumphant close of the discussion. How did he fail to 
perceive the enormous fallacy introduced by adding rare and momentary 
occurrence to diminutiveness of number ? how fail to perceive that any 
analogy must be infinitely absurd which should not include perpetual suf- 
fering, and that in the identical being ? The case indeed admitted of no 
analogy ; since no parallel representation could be made without intro- 
ducing the impossible supposition of a mortal criminal, kept perpetually 
alive to undergo the pains of a perpetual execution. 

In closing this note, we do not think it requisite to use many words in 
avowal of our high estimate of the intellect and the general energy of 
mind of the distinguished and lamented divine : who, indeed, has any other 
estimate ? But neither can there need any apology to even his warmest 
friends, for the expression of an opinion in which probably more than a few 
will coincide, that his writings are too often marked with an assumption, 
and an air of having perfectly disposed of the matter, which could barely 
be allowed in a mind of the very largest comprehension. 



18 Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 

such manifestations, presented through the entire visible crea- 
tion, place all that creation within the cognizance of religion : 
so that a religion which should decline to include these innu- 
merable and far-off displays of Deity within its comprehension, 
in forming its conception of the attributes, the works, and the 
government of the Almighty, would therein choose to content 
itself with a less glorious idea of him, and to offer him a less 
sublime worship, than that Being has given us the means to 
form and to offer. 

While, however, such a representation may be received un- 
graciously by minds that have never once surmised such a 
thing as an obligation enforced upon our religion, as to the 
extent of its contemplations, by the remotest stars discovered 
by the telescope, we are very confident that many serious but 
partially-cultivated persons, who have been impatient of the 
conscious narrowness of the scope of their religious ideas, will 
be greatly and devotionally benefited by this sublime introduc- 
tory discourse of Dr. Chalmers. 

In advancing into the regions of astronomy, in the spirit of 
religion, he takes both his text and his tone from a writer in 
whose mind the magnificence of the modern astronomy, could 
its wonders have been revealed to him, would have but inspired 
a so much the more exalted devotion. 

*' The Psalmist takes a still loftier flight. He leaves the world, and 
lifts his imagination to that mighty expanse which spreads above it and 
around it. He wings his way through space, and wanders in thought 
over its immeasurable regions. Instead of a dark and unpeopled solitude, 
he sees it crowded with splendour, and filled with the energy of the Divine 
presence. Creation rises in its immensity before him, and the world, with 
all which it inherits, shrinks into littleness at a contemplation so vast and 
so overpowering. He wonders that he is not overlooked amid the gran- 
deur and the variety which are on every side of him ; and passing upward 
from the majesty of nature to the majesty of nature's Architect, he ex- 
claims, ' What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man 
that thou visitest him ?' 

" There is much in the scenery of a nocturnal sky, to liftthe sou! to 
pious contemplation. That moon, and these stars, what are they ? They 
are detached from the world, and they lift you above it. You feel with- 
drawn from the earth, and rise in lofty abstraction above this little theatre 
of human passions and human anxieties. The mind abandons itself to 
reverie, and is transferred in the ecstasy of its thoughts, to distant and un- 
explored regions. It sees nature in the simplicity of her great elements, 
and it sees the God of nature invested with the high attributes of wisdom 
and majesty. 

" But what can these lights be ? The curiosity of the human mind is 
insatiable, and the mechanism of these wonderful heavens, has, in all ages, 



19 

been its subject and its employment. It has been reserved for these latter 
times, to resolve this great and interesting question. The sublimest pow- 
ers of philosophy have been called to the exercise, and astronomy may 
now be looked on as the most certain and best established of the sciences." 

The rapid and comprehensive " Sketch," which is quite in 
the manner of a person familiar with the speculations and facts 
of astronomy, begins with the planets of our sun, and the philo- 
sophic divine illustrates the very strong probability of their be- 
ing inhabited. He argues from their magnitude, and their several 
striking points of analogy to this world of ours. They have their 
movements on their own axes, their regular periodical revolu- 
tions round the sun, and their vicissitudes of seasons. Seve- 
ral of them have moons to alleviate the darkness of their night, 

" We can see of one, that its surface rises into inequalities, that it swells 
into mountains and stretches into valleys ; of another, that it is surround- 
ed with an atmosphere which may support the respiration of animals ; of 
a third, that clouds are formed and suspended over it, which may minis, 
ter to it all the bloom and luxuriance of vegetation; and of a fourth, that 
a white colour spreads over its northern regions, as its winter advances, 
and that on the approach of summer this whiteness is dissipated — giving 
room to suppose, that the element of water abounds in it, that it rises by 
evaporation into its atmosphere, that it freezes upon the application of 
cold, that it is precipitated in the form of snow, that it covers the groimd 
with a fleecy mantle, which melts away from the heat of a more vertical 
sun ; and that other worlds bear a resemblance to our own in the same 
yearly round of beneficent and interesting changes." 

We will acknowledge some little defect of sympathy with 
the delight which Dr. Chalmers expresses at the ascertain- 
ment of so very close an analogy as indicated in this last in- 
stance. Really this downright " fleecy" phenomenon of win- 
ter falls somewhat chilly on that animated visionary and half 
poetical idea, which we should have been better pleased to 
have been permitted to entertain of the physical condition of 
the inhabitants of these other worlds. This hemisphere of 
snow not only shuts down too much in the way of an extinguish- 
er on that enchanting imagery of a local economy in Avhich 
the imagination would have loved to place those unknown, 
races of beings, and forcibly suggests ideas of dreariness, 
hardships, and even morbid physical affections, and hostility to 
life ; it would also, as possibly or probably accompanied by 
these physical evils, seem too ominous of something much 
worse. The mind is forced to admit some fearful surmise of 
the too possible existence, in those worlds, of that horrible 
thing which has blasted the natui'al beauties and delights, and 



20 Chalmers's astrononomical discourses. 

mainly created the natural evils, of these terrestrial scenes. 
An analogy so very close to an order of elemental nature 
which in this world inflicts so much inconvenience and suffer- 
ing, in which suffering, though immediately inflicted by the 
instrumentality of the elements, we have the effect of sin, 
must throw us on the ground of some abstracted moral consid- 
erations, to maintain our obstinate hope that this infernal 
plague has not invaded the people of those abodes. 

The passage we have transcribed is followed by one in 
which, highly picturesque as it is, the doctor's elated imagi- 
nation has carried him into a very palpable extravagance, in 
conjecturing such possibilities of improvement in the artificial 
subsidiaries to sight, as shall bring at last to our perception the . 
green of the planetary vegetation, the dead wintry hue in- 
duced by its disappearance, the marks of cultivation extending 
over tracts previously wild, and even the cities forming the 
central seats of mighty empires. Were we obliged to go the 
whole length which analogy might seem to lead in shaping to 
our imaginations the economy of those regions, might we not 
reasonably be glad that such distinctness of detection as our 
author is willing to anticipate, is physically impossible, lest 
there should otherwise have been some danger of our having 
at length the mortification to descry such things as munitions 
of war, or idols' temples, or popish cathedrals ? 

There can be no scruple in assuming, a general principle, 
that it is in the highest degree improbable the Almighty Spirit 
should have constructed vast fabrics of Matter, to remain dis- 
connected from Mind, as a conscious power to which those 
fabrics may be available for use. Useless to the Creator 
himself, they would be useless absolutely, if not serving to the 
purpose of the occupancy, and support, and activity, and con- 
templation, of sentient intelligent creatures. Prodigious orbs, 
disposed too in the order and movement of system, but thus 
desolate, and dead, and merely running vast circles in space, 
would really suggest something like the idea (we speak with 
reverence) of the Creator's amusing himself with an ingenious 
contrivance. — Any notion that the other planets of the solar 
system were created for the use of this earth, would be now 
too ridiculous for the grossest ignorance to dream. 

When to this consideration, of the extreme improbability of 
immense conformations of matter being made to be devoid of 
the occupancy of mind, is added the whole account of the ascer- 



2X 

tained points of analogy between the other planets and our 
own, we think that, excepting to minds repugnant to magniii- 
cent ideas, the probability that the other orbs of our system are 
inhabited worlds, must appear so great, that a direct revelation 
from heaven declaring the fact, would make but very little dif- 
ference in our assurance of it. 

Following the discoveries of science no further than the 
limits of this solar system, we behold them, says Dr. Chalmers, 

— " widening the empire of creation far beyond the limits which were for- 
merly assigned to it. They give us to see that yon sun, throned in the 
centre of his planetary system, gives light, and warmth, and the vicissi- 
tude of seasons, to an extent of surface several hundreds of times greater 
than that of the earth which we inhabit. They lay open to us a number 
of worlds, rolling in their respective circles round this vast lummary — and 
prove that the ball which we tread upon, with all its mighty burden of 
oceans and continents, instead of being distinguished from the others, is 
among the least of them ; and, from some of the more distant planets, 
would not occupy a visible point in the concave of their firmament They 
let us know that though this mighty earth, with all its myriads of people, 
were to sink into annihilation, there are some worlds where an event so 
awful to us would be unnoticed and unknown, and others where it would 
be nothing more than the disappearance of a little star which had ceased 
from its twinkling." 

But how humiliating it is to the proud ambition of the 
human faculties, that thus we are already almost overwhelmed 
with images of grandeur when we have hardly made a first 
step, hardly an infant's step, in that stupendous excursion to 
\vhich the mind is summoned forth, — summoned, not by wild 
fancy or poetry, but by grave peremptory science, with a 
plain austerity as if in scorn that such a thing as poetry should 
have been suffered to pretend to a loftier sublimity than truth 
and fact. It is indeed most striking to observe how all the 
sublimities of imagination and invention dwindle and grow 
dim as placed in comparative measurement against the virtual 
infinity of the system of visible existence ; as brought into the 
converging light of indefinite millions of suns. It is not only 
that this immensity of splendid material substance has, simply 
so contemplated, an overpowering magnificence, rendered in- 
conceivably more august by the accession of the idea that in- 
telligent beings in multitudes beyond all knowledge, or calcu- 
lation, or conjecture, of any intelligence but One, dwell in the 
universe of daylight emanating from all these luminaries ; the 
ultimate sublimity of all this glory of material existence is, 
that it gives the sign every where, through its immeasurable 
2* 



22 

extent, of the presence of another Existence. The mystery 
of a pure Spirit, infinite, and yet bearing no relation to place, 
so confounds the understanding, and something at least analo- 
gous to vast extension is so necessary to our conception of mag- 
nitude of being, that the mind is glad, in essaying to contem- 
plate the orreatness of the Divine Essence, to accept in aid the 
effect of boundless local extension, in the way of a distinct 
recognition of that Essence as present in one, and in another, 
and in each, and in all, of the material glories of an indefinite 
universe : and this it can in some measure do, or at least is 
beguiled to feel as if it could, without directly attributing to that 
Spirit a physical mode of extension from one part and one limit 
of the creation to another and the opposite. Thus the mate- 
rial universe, with all its splendours and magnitudes, ascer- 
tained, conjectured, or possible, may be regarded — not as a 
vehicle, not as an inhabited form, or a comprehending sphere, 
of the Sovereign Spirit, but as a type, which signifies, though 
by a faint, inadequate correspondence after all, that as great as 
the universe is in the material attributes of extension and 
splendour, so great is the Divine Being in the infinitely 
transcendent nature of spiritual existence. The least and nar- 
nowest idea to be entertained is, that in this spiritual and 
transcendent jnode the predominating intelligence has the ex- 
tension of the universe. What emphasis will such a view give 
to the sentence of the poet, 

*' An undevout astronomer is mad !" 
And yet how seldom do we find the magnificent images of 
astronomy brightened into still nobler lustre by the spirit of 
piety which giv^es them so consecrated a character in the 
work of Dr. Chalmers. 

From the solar system the inquiring contemplation is car- 
ried to those other countless luminaries, all shining from such 
an inconceivable distance. The preacher passes rapidly, and 
with a commanding reach of thought, over the most wonderful 
facts and speculations of the subject. The distance is the 
first of the facts which so defy human comprehension. 

** If the whole planetary system were lighted up into a globe of fire, it 
would appear only a small lucid point from the nearest of the fixed stars. 
If a body were projected from the sun with the velocity of a cannon ball, 
it would take hundreds of thousands of years before it described that migh- 
ty interval which separates the nearest of them from our sun and our sys- 
tern. If this earth, which moves at more than the inconceivable velocity 



CHALMERS S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 23 

of a million and a half miles a day, were to be hurried from its orbit, and 
to take the same rapid flight over this immense tract, it would not have 
arrived at the termination of its journey after taking all the time which 
has elapsed since the creation of the world. These are great numbers, 
and great calculations, and the mind feels its own impotency in attempt- 
ing to grasp them. We can state them in words ; we can exhibit them in 
figures ; we can demonstrate them by the powers of a most rigid and in- 
fallible geometry. But no human fancy can summon up a lively or an 
adequate conception." 

The immense magnitude, so demonstrated, of those stars ; 
their shining with their own light ; the *' periodical variations 
of light" observed in some of them, as probable indication of a 
revolution, as in case of our own solar stars, on their axes ; 
authorize a most undoubting assumption, (opposed by no argu- 
ment, and confirmed by the consideration that so much the 
mightier is the display of the Creator's glory,) that they are 
all the central lights of so many systems. 

As to their number, "the unassisted eye can take in a 
thousand, and the best telescope which the genius of man has 
constructed, can take in eighty mUlions.^^ And nothing, as 
our author suggests, could be more irrational than to fancy 
that the utmost number of such luminaries comprised in the 
universe, may be just that number which the people of one of 
the planets of one of the suns, have, at a particular period of 
time, contrived optical instruments competent for descrying. 
Quite as reasonable would the assumption have been upon the 
discoveries by means of the first telescope that was made, as 
upon those ofHerschel. When we reflect what kind of crea- 
ture it is to whose view thus much of the universe has been 
disclosed, — that the physical organ of this very perception, is 
of such a nature that it might, in consequence of the extinction 
of life, be reduced to dust within a few short days after it had 
admitted rays from the stars ; while, as to his mental part, he 
is, besides his moral debasement, at the very bottom of the 
gradation of probably innumerable millions of intellectual races 
(certainly at the bottom, since a being inferior to man in intel- 
lect, could not be rational) — when we think of this, it will ap- 
pear utterly improbable that the portion of the universe which 
such a creature can take knowledge of, should be more than a 
very diminutive tract in the vast expansion of existence. And 
if the subject be considered in reference to the Supreme Ori- 
ginating Power, the probability becomes indefinitely stronger, 
that beyond the sphere of our perceptions, enlarged as it is by 



24 Chalmers's astroxomical discourses. 

artificial aids, there is all but infinitely more of material exis- 
tence than there is within its compass. It being demonstrated 
by that vastness of material glory which is ascertained to exist, 
that magnitude and multitude were of the essence of the Cre- 
ator's plan, we are well authorized in the assurance that the 
magnitude and the multitude must be on the most transcendent 
scale, a scale approaching as near toward a correspondence to 
the infinite supremacy of his own nature, as finiteness of one 
nature can (if we may be pardoned such expedients of ex- 
pression) towards infiniteness of another. It is therefore but 
little to say, that the material creation is probably of such an 
extent that the greatest of created beings not only have never 
yet been able to survey it all, but never will to all eternity. 
For must it not be one great object in the Creator's design, 
that this magnitude should make a sublime and awful impres- 
sion on his intelligent creatures? But if the magnitude is to 
make this impression, what would be the impression made on 
created spirits by their coming to the end, the boundary, of 
this magnitude ? It is palpable that this latter impression must 
counteract the former. So that if the stupendous extension of 
the works of God was intended and adapted to promote, in the 
contemplations of the highest intelligences, an indefinitely glo- 
rious though still incompetent conception of the Divine infin- 
ity, the ascertaining of the limit, the distinct perception of the 
finiteness, of that manifestation of power, would tend with a 
dreadful force to repress and annihilate that conception ; and it 
may well be imagined that if an exalted adoring spirit could 
ever in eternity find himself at that limit, the perception Avould 
inflict inconceivable horror. — In short, this is the subject on 
which it is purely impossible to be extravagant, in the way of 
simple amplification and aggravation of thought. And there 
is not the slightest transgression of sobriety in the language of 
our author, when he speaks of " those mighty tracts, which 
shoot far beyond what eye hath seen or the heart of man 
conceived — which sweep endlessly along, and merge into an 
awful and mysterious infinity ;^^ — or when he adopts the con- 
jecture, in explanation of the nebuIcB, that the fixed stars, 
— " instead of lying uniformly, and in a state of equi-distance from each 
other, are arranged into distinct clusters ; that in the same manner as the 
distance of the nearest fixed stars, so inconceivably superior to our plan- 
ets, from each other, marks the separation of the solar, so the distance of 
two contiguous clusters may be so inconceivably superior to the reciprocal 
distance of those fixed stars which belong to the same cluster, as to mark 



CHAL3IERS S ASTROXOMICAL DISCOURSES. 



25 



an equally distinct separation of the clusters, and to constitute each of 
them an individual member of some higher and more extended arrange- 
ment." 

— Or when, admonishing the philosopher against pride in the 
great discoveries of astronomy, he reminds him that there is 

— " an unsealed barrier, beyond which no power either of eye or of teles- 
cope shall ever carry him ; that on the other side there is a height, and a 
depth, and a length, and a breadth, to which the who^e of this concave 
and visible firmament, dwindles into the insignificancy of an atom ; and 
though all which the eye of man can take in, .or his fancy grasp at, were 
swept away, there might still remain as ample a field over which the Di- 
vinity may expatiate, and which he may have peopled with innumerable 
worlds. If the whole visible creation were to disappear, it would leave a 
solitude behmd it — but to the Infinite Mind, that can take in the whole 
system of nature, this solitude might be nothing, a small unoccupied point 
in that immensity which surrounds it, and which he may have filled with 
the wonders of his omnipotence. Though this earth were to be burned 
up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yoti sky 
were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of 
the Divinity has inscribed on it, were to be put out for ever — an event, so 
awful to us and to every world in our vicinity, by which so many suns 
would be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life and of popula- 
tion would rush into forgetfulness — what is it in the high scale of the Al- 
mighty's workmanship ? a mere shred, which, though scattered into 
nothing, would leave the universe of God one entire scene of greatness 
and of majesty." 

We may be sure, as we have already suggested, that each 
of the elements of the manifestation of an Intinite Being, will 
do him justice thus far, that it will have a practical infiniteness 
relatively to the capacities of his intelligent creatures ; that 
the utmost that will be permitted to the comprehension of these 
intelligences, will be the mere abstract truth that some of 
these elements cannot, from their very nature, be literally infi- 
nite ; that their amazement will be eternally augmented by 
the very circumstance of this sublime enigma, of an element 
which must thus by its nature be limited, and yet leaves them 
all, through the eternity of their experiments and excursions, 
as far from any sensible approach to the verification of the limit, 
as at the first step they made into the mysterious expansion. 
But if we take our conjecture of the intellectual magnitude, 
and the probable excursive powers, of the highest of the cre- 
ated beings, from the consideration of the infinite power and 
benefcence of the Creator, and of what it is rationally probable 
that such a Being would create in the nature of mental exist- 
ences, to admire, adore, and serve him, we shall be warrant- 



26 Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 

ed to imagine beings to whom it may be possible exultingly to 
leave sun-beams far behind them in the rapidity of their career, 
from systems to systems still beyond. And if we add to 
the account the equal probability of a perpetual augmentation 
of their powers in a ratio correspondent to a magnitude already 
so stupendous, and crown it with the idea of an indefatigable 
exertion of those powers in discovery and contemplation of the 
Creator's manifestations through everlasting ages — there will 
then be required a universe to which all that the telescope has 
descried is but as an atom ; a universe of which it shall not be 
within the possibilities of any intelligence less than the infinite 
to know, 

•' where rears the Terminating Pillar high 

Itaextramundane head." 

We need not dwell on the considerations, on the ground of 
which Dr. Chalmers insists it would be most absurd to disbe- 
lieve, absurd even to doubt, that this boundless multitude of 
worlds, this scene of almighty power and glory, is populous 
through all its systems with contemplators and worshippers of 
the Divinity. 

If such a representation give, after all, but an infinitely fee- 
ble glimmer of the truth, respecting the magnitude of the crea- 
tion, we may, in the name of both sense and piety, assume, 
with the utmost confidence, to repeat our reprehension of that 
mode of religious faith and sentiment, which would pretend to 
have so much the more of celestial light for excluding the 
beams of all the stars. What is it, we would ask, that comes 
upon us in those beams, — in the beams of those luminaries 
which are beheld by the naked eye, next of those countless 
myriads beheld by the assisted eye, and then of those infinite 
legions which can never be revealed to the earth, but are seen 
by an elevated imagination, and will perhaps burst with sud- 
den and awful effulgence on the departed spirit 1 What is it, 
but the pure unmingled reflection of Him who cannot be be- 
held in himself, who, present to all things, is yet in the dark- 
ness of infinite and eternal mystery, subsisting in an essence 
unparticipated, unapproached by gradation of other beings, 
impalpable to all speculation, refined beyond angelic percep- 
tion, foreign from all analogy — but who condescends to be- 
come visible in the effects of his nature, in the lustre of his 
works ? And is it not, we ask again, one of the grand diffi- 
culties in religion, and one of the things most ardently to be 



Chalmers's astronojiical discourses. 27 

desired, to obtain a glorious idea of the Divinity, passing afar 
from that littleness and anthropomorphism which so confine 
and degrade our contemplations and devotions ? It cannot but 
be one of the plainest (it/fie^ of religion, to aspire to the attain- 
ment of such an idea. And therefore a strong remonstrance 
may justly be directed to the conscience o^ a professed wor- 
shipper who cares not how little of the element of sublimity 
there may be in his conception of the adorable object, — who 
feels no religious mortification to think that the grandest idea 
of the Almighty \vhich he does effectually realize in his mind, 
is in all probability prodigiously below what would be the true 
and full representative idea of one of the highest angels. 

We have expatiated thus out of all proportion on the first 
part of this interesting volume, from a consideration of the un- 
questionable fact, that there is among serious persons a quite 
irreligious neglect of one of the two grand forms of divine 
revelation, the Word and the Works of the Almighty ; and 
that even among Christian teachers there is often a very un- 
thinking and ill-discriminating mode of depreciating the latter, 
in the comparison ; a practice against which they might have 
been warned by observing the endless references in the Word 
of that Being to his Works ; and by observing how very often 
the Word rests the folness of the meaning of its dictates and 
illustrations upon an adequate view of the Works. They 
might have been made aware to what a littleness of signifi- 
cance a thousand expressions in the Bible, relating to the 
Deity himself, are reduced by a want of extended and admiring 
ideas of the labours, if we may so express it, and the magnifi- 
cent empire, of the Sovereign Spirit. They might have been 
taught to suspect that it must be a very doubtful Christian ex- 
cellence to be but little in sympathy with those devout minds 
which, in the very condition and act of being the channels of 
divine communication to mankind, were so often elated at the 
view of suns and starry heavens, even at a period when the 
vision of those wonders was littleness itself in comparison of 
that magnificence to which science has now expanded it. 
Not, assuredly, that Christian teachers should become deep 
students in science, or lecturers on astronomy ; but the great 
elementary views of the universe are of easy attainment, and 
have a simplicity readily available for magnifying our contem- 
plations, and our representations, of the divine majesty. We 



28 

trust Dr. Chalmers's work will prove in this respect of very 
eminent value and use to the religious public. 

Such a view of the magnitude of the creation shows the in- 
conceivable insignificance of this our world ; insomuch that, 
according to our author's simile, its total annihilation would 
be no more sensible a loss to the universe, than the falling of 
a leaf into a stream which carries it away, with a destruction 
of all its multitude of microscopic animalculse, would be to an 
ample forest. Such is the importance in the universe, of the 
globe which appears so wide a scene to its intelligent inhabit- 
ants, baffling by its long succession of region after region, 
the realizing power of their imagination ; — the globe of which 
the most protracted journeying life would suffice but for the 
survey of a very small portion ; — for the ascendency over nar- 
row sections of which, opposed millions have, through every 
age, been inflamed to mutual bloodshed and extermination ; — 
for the acquisition of little specks of which, in an appropria- 
tion through a few fleeting years, innumerable individuals 
are at all times toiling with an ardour which merges all other 
interests ; — of which, in short, its transient inhabitants are 
seeking to make a Heaven and a God. Such, relatively to 
the grand whole, is the importance of this orb, and of the 
creatures to whom it appears so immense and interesting an 
object. Truly, it was reserved for the Modern Astronomy to 
supply an adequate commentary on our author's text : " Lord, 
what is man that thou art mindful of him 1 and the son of man 
that thou visitest him?" 

But here, instead of a humble and adoring gratitude that 
the Almighty does, nevertheless, visit man, in Avays of mar- 
vellous condescension and benignity, there comes in the ma- 
lignant suggestion, that our world being so trivial an object in 
the creation, it is absurd to imagine that the Being who pre- 
sides over it all should give such attention to this atom of ex- 
istence, as the Christian religion represents him to do, and 
therefore the religion that so represents cannot be true. 

" Is it likely, says the infidel, that God would send his eternal Son, to 
die for the puny occupiers of so insignificant a province in the mighty field 
of his creation ? Are we the befitting objects of so great and so signal 
an interposition ? Does not the largeness of that field which astronomy 
lays open to the view of modern science, throw a suspicion over the truth 
of the gospel history ; and how shall we reconcile the greatness of that 
wonderful movement which was made in heaven for the redemption of 
fallen man, with the comparative meanness and obscurity of our species ? 



29 

" Such a humble portion of the universe as ours, could never have been 
the object of such high and distinguishing attentions as Christianity has 
assigned to it. God would not have manifested liimself in the flesh for 
the salvation of so paltry a world. The monarch of a whole continent 
would never move from his capital, and lay aside the splendour of royait}^ ; 
and subject himself for months, or for years, to perils and poverty, and 
persecution ; and take up his abode in some small islet of his dominions, 
which, though swallowed by an earthquake, could not be missed amid 
the glories of so wide an empire ; and all this to giain the lost affections 
of a few families upon its surface." 

How little apprehension our author, as a Christian advo- 
cate, felt at meeting this objection, appears from the ambitious 
delight with which he has dilated the view of that grandeur 
of the Universe, on which the objection is founded. He pro- 
ceeds to the argument for silencing it, in the Second Dis- 
course, which commences with some striking observations on 
the imperfect community of feeling and of intellectual percep- 
tion between human beings. These are made to bear on the 
character of Sir Isaac Newton, in the way of representing 
that the generality of even cultivated men are perfectly unap- 
prized of, and incapable of adequately estimating, some of the 
most important circumstances in the agency of that philoso- 
pher's mind. They look at his brilliant discoveries, and ad- 
mire, in a general way, the mighty force of genius and intel- 
lect so obviously manifested in them ; but have no comprehen- 
sion, and from the nature of the case can have none, of that 
absolutely sublime self-command and self-denial which ac- 
companied, in continual exercise, the process which resulted 
in so vast an extension of the dominion of science. They 
cannot be aware what a course and what a magnitude of 
achievement it was, of self-emancipation from all pre-occupy- 
ing systems and notions ; of calm endurance of the hostility 
of those who could not be so emancipated ; of repression of 
all temerity of speculation , that might have sprung from con- 
scious power and success ; of invincible coolness and perse- 
vering labour amid the dazzling disclosure of magnificent 
novelty ; of resistance to all the beguilement of the splendid 
plausibilities which must often have presented their sudden 
fascinations to such a mind in such a career ; in short, of in- 
corruptible reason, which never lost sight of the tests of truth, 
nor failed to acknowledge submissively the limits to the range 
of the human intellect. An entire exemption from arrogance 
and presumption, and an invariable, inviolable fidelity to the 



30 Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 

principle of admitting nothing but solid evidence as the founda- 
tion of any part of his theories, are described as the distinc- 
tive qualities of what may be called the moral government of 
Newton's intellectual powers and operations. With just in- 
dignation therefore our Author reprehends the ignorant arro- 
gance of pretenders to philosophy, who, come into possession 
of Newton's graiid discoveries, with an ease which might 
have precluded, but does not preclude, any indulgence of such 
an impertinent feeling as pride, avail themselves in the pro- 
secution of other speculations, of these great conquests of 
science, in a spirit perfectly the reverse of that of the mighty 
thinker who made them : of which anti-philosophical, and 
anti-Newtonian spirit, one of the most remarkable samples is 
this argument against Christianity. 

Dr. Chalmers exposes, with great force of aggravating illus- 
trations, the total baselessness and extravagant arrogance of 
the assumption that the dispensation of the Messiah does in 
no manner involve or affect any other tribes of beings than 
the human race. It must be confessed that the matter is car- 
ried somewhat to the extreme in supposing, as a parallel 
case, such a hardly possible absurdity as that of a man's 
gravely delineating, on the ground of assumptions drawn from 
some general analogies among the planetary worlds, a scheme 
of a department of the natural history, — of the botany, for in- 
stance, of some of the planets, and proceeding to the length of 
theorizing on the moral temperament of their inhabitants. 
There is some trifle less temerity in hazarding negative gene- 
ral assertions, than in hazarding positive specific statements, 
respecting the unknown economy of other worlds. The par- 
allel holds, however, in the essential point of absolute want of 
all evidence, and therefore of all reasonable ground for the 
assertions. 

•' How do infidels know that Christianity is set up for the single benefit 
of this earth and its inhabitants ? How are they able to tell us that if you 
go to other planets the person and the religion of Jesus are there unknown ? 
We challenge them to the proof of this said positive announcement of 
theirs. We see in this objection a glaring transgression on the spirit and 
the maxims of that very philosophy which they profess to idolize. They 
have made their argument against us out of an assertion which has 
positively no feet to rest upon — an assertion which they have no means 
whatever of verifying — an assertion, the truth or the falsehood of which 
can only be gathered out of some supernatural message, for it lies com- 
pletely beyond the range of human observation." 



CHALMERS S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 31 

Those who raised the objection were aware that, to give it 
full effect, it was necessary the religion itself should be made 
accessary to its own intended humiliation ; that the Book pro- 
fessing to be a comprehensive revelation of its constitution, 
should be understood to avow, or most decidedly imply, that 
the pretended mediatorial economy of the Son of God, is limit- 
ed exclusively to the human race. It was obvious that, un- 
less this were understood, the hostile argument must, in every 
way, and in every part, be founded on a pure assumption. 
But it is curious to observe, how easily and unceremoniously 
this prerequisite fact was taken for granted ; and without, 
probably, one hour's impartial inquiry how the Bible does ac- 
tually represent the matter, it was confidently affirmed, as a 
thing liable to no question, that the pretended dispensation of 
the Messiah is, by the import of its own declaration, restricted 
from any wider sphere than that of man and his interests. 

Now, it is positively denied that the Scriptures make any 
such representation ; it is next asserted without contradiction, 
that no such information has come by any other superhuman 
communication ; and when it is added that there is nothing in 
the nature of the case to justify or countenance any such as- 
sumption, the infidel's asserted fact, from which he infers that 
Christianity is an imposture, is exploded away. The argu- 
ment is the simplest and the shortest possible ; but it is ampli- 
fied with great force of imagination by Dr. Chalmers, in a 
series of bold suggestions of what may be true, as to the ex- 
tent of the Christian economy, for any thing the infidel can 
know to the contrary. 

" For any thing he can tell" [and with this precise phrase are pointed a 
whole quiver of assailant sentences, — no less than ten in immediate suc- 
cession] " sin has found its way into other worlds. For any thing he can 
tell, their people have banished themselves from communion with God. 
For any thing he can tell, many a visit has been made to each of them, 
on the subject of our common Christianity, by commissioned messengers 
from the throne of the Eternal," &lc. «&c. &lc. 

And is it not about as silly as it is arrogant, in these infi- 
dels, to affect to dictate to religion what they choose it shall be, 
that they may have the greater advantage against it ? It 
seems much of a piece M^th that memorable proceeding of 
certain of the fraternity, the decreeing death to be an eternal 
sleep, — which made just no difference at all in the real attri- 
butes of death, and made a difference but so much for the 



32 

worse in the feelings of whoever could, in such self-betraying 
folly and presumption, advance the more carelessly and con- 
fidently to the encounter with that formidable power. Neither 
death nor religion will consent to forego its qualities in obse- 
quiousness to the arbitrary definitions of man ; nor submit to 
the circumscription which it might be commodious to him to 
impose. 

The advocate of Christianity, then, confidently repels the 
assumption of its enemies as to the limitation of its sphere ; 
but at the same time he is hardly less confident in the assur- 
ance that even were the assumption conceded to them, and 
were it avowed by the Christian revelation that the economy 
therein declared, in terms importing so marvellous an inter- 
vention of Deity, does really concentrate all these glories of 
grace and power on man exclusively, — even then it could 
easily be shown that the notion of this being so immeasura- 
bly out of all proportion to the despicable insignificance of this 
spot of earth and its inhabitants, that it is irrational to believe 
it, is a notion betraying great narrowness of mind, — proud as 
its entertainers are of this fancied elevation of thought. 

On this lower ground Dr. Chalmers powerfully maintains 
the argument in the third Discourse, "On the Extent of the 
Divine Condescension." "Let us," he says, '■''admit the as- 
sertion [of the confined scope of the Christian economy] and 
take a view of the reasoning which has been constructed upon 
it." The exposure of this reasoning begins with the remark, 
(which expresses the essential principle and force of the whole 
refutation,) that this doctrine of disbelief arises entirely from 
the combined feebleness and arrogance of the conception en- 
tertained of the Deity. It is a conception which presumes to 
limit the powers of that Being, and which takes its authority 
to do so from the very fact of the demonstrated immensity of 
those powers. By practically demonstrating his ability to 
make and sustain a system so amazingly vast, he has demon- 
strated his inability to give a distinct and perfect attention to 
each part. We cannot comprehend the possibility of the 
combination or union of this immense generality, and this ab- 
solutely perfect particularity, of the exercise of intelligence 
and power, — and therefore it is impossible, even to the Su- 
preme Mind. In other words, that Mind has been too ambi- 
tious of being the God of an indefinite multitude of worlds and 
races, to be a God, in the fulness and perfect exercise of the 



33 

divine attributes, to any one of them in particular. The ex- 
ceedingly monstrous absurdity, as well as presumption, of thus 
inferring littleness from greatness, and on the very ground 
that that greatness is proved to be infinitely transcendent, is 
exhibited in its just character, and with just reprobation, in 
several powerful and eloquent passages, too long to be tran- 
scribed. Who can think of the subject without being con- 
founded at the dire perversity of the human mind, that thus, 
instead of following forth the plain, rational indication afford- 
ed by the fact of infinite perfection evinced in one mode, to the 
delightful, and sublime, and adoring effect of attributing per- 
fection in all modes, would choose to violate the clearest rules 
of sense in order to degrade and eclipse the glorious idea of 
the Divine Nature ; — as if to indemnify and avenge itself for 
the insignificance of its own ! — God shall not in every way in- 
finitely surpass man, and defy his comprehension. This is 
the principle. Dr. Chalmers says, of the kind of infidelity 
under consideration. 

" To bring God to the level of our comprehension, we would clothe 
him in the impotency of a man. We would transfer to his wonderful 
mind all the imperfection of our own faculties. When we are taught by 
astronomy that he has millions of worlds to look after, and thus to add in 
one direction to the glories of his character, we take away from them in 
another, by saying that each of these worlds must be looked after imper- 
fectly. The use that we make of a discovery that should heighten our 
every conception of God, and humble us into the sentiment that a Being 
of such mysterious elevation is to us unfathomable, is to sit in judgment 
over him, ay, and to pronounce such a judgment as degrades him, and 
keeps him down to the standard of our own paltry imagination ! We 
are introduced by modern science to a multitude of other suns and other 
systems ; and the perverse interpretation we put upon the fact that 
God can diffuse the benefits of his power and his goodness over such a 
variety of worlds, is that he cannot, or will not bestow so much goodness 
on one of those worlds, as a professed revelation from Heaven has an- 
nounced to us." 

The argument might be authoritatively insisted upon, and 
without fear of rational contradiction, that the exercise of in- 
telligence and power manifested to demonstration in main- 
taining the system of the amazing whole, does necessarily in- 
clude a distinct attention to all the constituent parts, down to 
the minutest. For, in the most general and the simplest no- 
tion possible of that comprehensive exercise, we make it take 
distinct account of the great leading and immediate constitu- 
ents or components of the system, with their relations and 



34 Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 

adaptations ; but these have also their constituents, by means 
of which they are what they are in themselves, and what they 
are relatively to the whole system ; and then these again, 
these subordinates, have their constituents also, with their re- 
lations and adaptations ; and so downward in an indefinite 
gradation. Now, it is evident that, throughout this retiring 
series, the state or constitution of things at each further re- 
move, must depend on the state or constitution of things at the 
next remoter condition of their existence ; and so onward, to 
that state of things, whatever it is, in which created existence 
has its essence and its primary constitution : so that the ulti- 
mate state of things, as appearing in a perfectly constituted 
universe, depends, through a long and continuously depend- 
ent gradation, on the nature and adaptations of their primary 
constituents. And how, therefore, can a given state of things 
in their ultimate constitution be secured without a certain con- 
dition of things being maintained in the primary mode of their 
existence ? And how can this be without the divine inspec- 
tion and power being constantly exerted on them all in that, 
their original mode ? 

But not to seek the aid of these subtleties : — It is immedi- 
ately obvious that an incomparably more glorious idea is enter- 
tained of the Divinity, by conceiving of him as possessing a 
wisdom and a power competent, without an effort, to maintain 
an infinitely perfect inspection and regulation, distinctly, of all 
subsistences, even the minutest, comprehended in the uni- 
verse, than by conceiving of him as only maintaining some 
kind of general superintendence of the system, — only general, 
because a perfect attention to all existences individually would 
be too much, it is deemed, for the capacity of even the Su- 
preme Mind. And for the very reason that this would be the 
most glorious idea of him, it must be the true one. To say 
that we can, in the abstract, conceive of a magnitude of intelli- 
gence and power which would constitute the Deity, if he pos- 
sessed it, a more glorious and adorable Being than he actually 
is, could be nothing less than flagrant impiety. 

On even such general and a priori grounds the preacher is 
authorized to meet the infidel objection by the following posi- 
tion : 

" That God, in addition to the bare faculty of dwelling- on a multipli- 
city of objects at one and the same time, has this faculty in such wonder- 
ful perfection, that he can attend as fully, and provide as richly, and 



Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 35 

manifest all his attributes as illustriously, on every one of these objects, as 
if the rest had no existence, and no place whatever in his government or 
his thoughts." 

But, he insists chiefly and wisely on the strong and accu- 
mulated proofs of fact, that the divine intelligence and energy- 
are thus all-pervading and all-distinguishing. He appeals, in 
the first place, to the personal history of each of his hearers, 
and of each individual of the species, as most simple and per- 
fect evidence that God is maintaining, literally without the 
smallest moment's intermission, an exercise of atte^iition and 
power inconceivably minute, and complex, and as it were con- 
centrated, on each unit. Each is conscious of a being totally 
distinct from all the rest; as absolutely self-centered and 
circumscribed an individual as if there were no other such be- 
ing on earth. And thus distinct is each as an object of the 
divine attention, which in a perfect manner recognizes the in- 
finite and to us mysterious difference between the greatest 
possible likeness and identity. But think of the prodigious 
multitude of these separate beings, each requiring and mono- 
polizing a regard and action of the Divine Spirit perfectly dis- 
tinct from that which each of all the others requires and en- 
gages. A mere perception of every one of the perhaps thou- 
sand millions of human beings, — a perception that should 
simply keep in view through every moment each individual as 
a separate object, and without distinguishing any particulars 
in the being or circumstances of that object, — would evince a 
magnitude and mode of intelligence quite overwhelming to 
reflect upon. But then consider, that each one of these dis- 
tinct objects is itself what may justly be denominated a system, 
combined of matter and spirit, comprising a vast complexity of 
principles, elements, mechanism, capacities, processes, liabil- 
ities, and necessities. What an inconceivable kind and meas- 
ure, or rather magnitude beyond all measure, of sagacity, and 
power, and vigilance, are required to preserve one such being 
in a state of safety, and health, and intellectual sanity ! But 
then, while the fact is before us, that so many millions are 
every moment so preserved, and that during thousands of 
years the same economy has been maintained, and that not a 
mortal has the smallest surmise but that it can, with perfect 
ease, be maintained for ages to come, — the suggestion that all 
this is too much for the Almighty, never once obtruding itself 
to disturb any man's tranquillity — while there is before us the 



36 Chalmers's ASTRONOMiCAt discourses. 

practical illustration of a power combining such immense com- 
prehension with such exquisite discrimination, how well it 
becomes our intellect and our humility to take upon us to de- 
cide what measure and manifestations of his attention such a 
Being may or may not confer upon one world, in a consistency 
of proportion with the attention which is to be perfect in its 
exercise on each and all! 

The argument from the demonstrated perfect and continu- 
ous attention of the Divine Mind to objects comparatively in- 
significant, becomes indefinitely stronger when carried down 
to those forms of life which are brought to our knowledge by 
the utmost powers of the microscope. A doctrine or a disbe- 
lief founded on inference from one view of the works of God, 
must, to be rational, comport with the just inferences from eve- 
ry other. Yet those who justify their infidelity by the discov- 
eries of the telescope, seem to have chosen to forget that there 
is another instrument, which has made hardly less wonderful 
discoveries in an opposite direction ; discoveries authorizing 
an inference completely destructive of that made from the 
astronomical magnitudes. And it is very gratifying to see 
the lofty assumptions drawn, in a spirit as unphilosophical as 
irreligious, from remote systems and the immensity of the uni- 
verse, and advanced against Christianity with an air of irre- 
sistible authority, — to see them encountered and annihilated by 
evidences sent forth from tribes and races of beings, of which 
innumerable millions might pass under the intensest look of 
the human eye imperceptible as empty space. No need, for 
the discomfiture of these assailants making war in the pomp of 
suns and systems, of any thing even " so gross as beetles," or 
as the hornets, locusts, and flies, which were arrayed against 
the pagans of former ages and other regions. In all their 
pride they are " crushed before" less than " the moth," beyond 
all conception less. Indeed the diminutiveness of the victori- 
ous confronters of infidel arrogance, is the grand principle of 
their power ; insomuch that the further they decline in an 
attenuation apparently toward nothing, the greater is their 
efficiency for this controversy ; and a might altogether incal- 
culable and unlimited, for this holy service, resides in those 
beings of which it is no absurdity nor temerity to assume that 
myriads may inhabit an atom, itself too subtile for the percep- 
tion of the eye of man. 

hQt a reflective man, when he stands in a garden, or a 



Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 37 

meadow, or a forest, or on the margin of a pool, consider what 
there is within the circuit of a very few feet around him, and 
that too exposed to the light, and with no veil for concealment 
from his sight, but nevertheless invisible to him. It is certain 
that within that little space there are organized beings, each 
of marvellous construction, independent of the rest, and en- 
dowed with the mysterious principle of vitality, to the amount 
of a number which could not have been told by units if there 
could have been a man so employed from the time of Adam to 
this hour. Let him indulge for a moment the idea of such a 
perfect transformation of his faculties as that all this population 
should become visible to him, each and any individual being 
presented to his perception as a distinct object of which he 
could take the same full cognizance as he now can of the large 
living creatures around him. What a perfectly new world ! 
What a stupendous crowd of sentient agents ! What an utter 
solitude, in comparison, that world of living beings of which 
alone his senses had been competent to take any clear account 
before ! And then let him consider, M'hether it be in his pow- 
er, without plunging into gross absurdity, to form any other 
idea of the creation and separate subsistence of these beings, 
than that each of them is the distinct object of the attention 
and the power of that one Spirit in which all things subsist. 
Let him, lastly, extend the view to the width of the whole ter- 
restrial field, of our mundane system, of the universe, — with 
the added thought how long such a creation has existed, and is 
to exist! 

And now, with such a view of what that Spirit is doing, has 
been doing through an unimaginable lapse of ages, and may 
do through an unbounded futurity, — is it within the possibili- 
ties of human presumption and absurdity, vast as they are, to 
do any thing more presumptuous and absurd, than to pretend 
to decide beforehand what is beyond the competence of the 
power, or out of proportion for the benevolence of that Spirit? 
l^es, it 25 within those possibilities ; for the presumption and 
absurdity may be inconceivably aggravated by that decision 
being made in express and intentional contradiction to a pow- 
erful combination of evidence, that he actually has done a given 
work of signal mercy to the human race. 

The topic of the infinite multitude of beings impalpable and 
invisible from their minuteness, attesting, in every spot of the 
earth, a Divine care and energy indefatigably acting on each, 
3 



SS CHALMEES'S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOFESES', 

is vigorously illustrated and applied by our author, who con- 
siders the infidel objection as by this time fairly disposed o^ 
It is hardly necessary to recapitulate ; but the argument stands 
briefly thus : No inference drawn from the stupendous extent 
and magnificence of the whole creation, is of the slightest au- 
thority, unless it consists with the inferences justly to be drawn 
from what we know of particular parts ; the antichristian in- 
ference drawn from that magnificent whole is decisively con- 
tradicted by the known facts in this particular part that we in- 
habit, which give such a demonstration of infinite greatness 
fixed in benevolent attention on indefinite littleness, while su- 
perintending the mighty aggregate of all things, as to leave no 
ground for a presumption that such an interposition as that 
affirmed by Christianity, implies too great a measure of Divine 
attention and action toward man, to be believed : therefore it 
may be believed, and authoritively demands to be believed, if 
it comes with due evidence of its own. The whole object of 
the argument is to show that the ground is perfectly clear for 
that evidence to come with its full appropriate force: the 
statement of that evidence was no part of the author's object. 

At the close of this argument, one or two considerations 
may deserve to be briefly adverted to. The infidels whose 
objection the Doctor is resisting, would never have thought of 
raising that objection as against that theory of Christianity 
which has in recent times assumed to itself, as its exclusive 
right, the distinction of "rational." And to professors of that 
system our author's whole effort of argument and eloquence 
appears, with the exception of the display of the Modern As- 
tronomy, little better than a piece of splendid impertinence ; 
since there could be nothing very wonderful or mysterious in 
the circumstance of God's appointing and qualifying, among 
any race of his rational but fallible creatures, a succession of 
individuals, of the mere nature of that race, to be teachers of 
truth and patterns of moral excellence to the rest, and in distin- 
guishing one of them by the endowment of a larger portion of 
light and virtue than any of the others. It is only against what 
we shall not hesitate to denominate the evangelical theory, 
which is founded on the doctrine of a divine incarnation and 
an atoning sacrifice, that the objection in question can be ad- 
vanced with any serious force. 

And this suggests another consideration. This being as- 
sumed as the true theory, a doubt may perhaps be raised, 



Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 39 

whether the preacher's argument from the astonishing extent 
and distinctness of the attention and care exercised by the 
Deity on this most inconsiderable of his creatures, be availa- 
ble or strictly applicable ; whether there be any thing so anal- 
ogous between the natural and providential economy and a 
dispensation so signally peculiar as that of redemption, as to 
admit of an argument from the evidence of the one to the 
probability of the other. The Doctor fully assumes this anal- 
ogy- 

For our feeble powers of contemplating the government of 
the Almighty, and for facility of proper instruction, there may 
be an advantage in our usual mode of viewing that government 
as distinguished into separate departments, as of nature, provi- 
dence, and grace. But we should greatly doubt whether, in a 
higher contemplation, this notion of separate departments 
would not vanish away. For if, in the first place, we endeav- 
our to elevate our thoughts to the divine nature, in contempla- 
tion of any of the attributes, — the power, for instance, or the 
goodness, — we cannot conceive of that attribute in any other 
way than as a perfectly simple quality, than, if we may pre- 
sume to apply such an expression, a homogeneous element ; 
capable of an infinite diversity of modes of operation and de- 
grees of manifestation, but not consisting of a combination of 
several distinguishable modes of the quality, each specifically 
applicable to a distinct department of the divine government. 

If, in the next place, we descend to the view of this world as 
a scene of that government, we may, on a slight general in- 
spection, seem to distinguish several departments so dissimilar 
to one another, as to have but a very partial relation or mutual 
dependence ; each existing as if chiefly for itself, and each re- 
quiring not only an appropriate mode of the operation of the 
divine power or goodness, but an appropriate modification in 
the attributes themselves ; and we shall speak accordingly, of 
the kingdom of nature, providence, and grace. But, if we 
think long, and comprehensively, and deeply, these artificial 
and arbitrary lines of demarcation will gradually melt from 
sight ; while instead of them there will become visible the 
grand lines of one vast system, lines running throughout it in 
all directions, evincing a perfect relation through all that we 
had regarded as almost independent parts ; or rather evincing 
a uni'y of economy, consisting of an infinity of particulars com- 
bined with divine art. And therefore, though some of these 



40 CHALMERS S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

particulars will appear prominent, b}^ a richer lustre of the di- 
vine goodness, thej will stand in an inseparable relation to all 
the other particulars in which that goodness is manifested, 
while all these other particulars stand in a contributive con- 
nexion, and a relative value, to those richest and best. 

It must follow, that it is incorrect and absurd to say, that the 
striking manifestations of the divine power and goodness in a 
department of what we call the world of nature, are of an order 
so perfectly foreign to the principle of a certain other and far 
greater affirmed manifestation of those attributes, as to furnish 
no analogy by which to combat the objected improbability of 
that greater manifestation. 

But suppose we place out of the argument, the marvellous 
evidences, revealed by the microscope, of the determination of 
the attributes of the Infinite Spirit to the most diminutive ob- 
jects, and consider only the exquisite minuteness of their unre- 
mitted exercise towards man. He, at least, is a system, in 
which each part and circumstance is in strict relation to all the 
other parts and circumstances. Both from the nature of the 
case, and from numberless illustrations of fact, it is evident that 
the apparently slightest circumstances of his being and condi- 
tion may have a vital connexion with the most important. 
There is no dissevering the human individual into independent 
portions, to be the subjects, respectively, of unconnected 
economies of divine government. It may be assumed that 
God does nothing for him purely and exclusively as an animal, 
but that his whole combined nature is kept in view in the di- 
vine management. The natural providence, if we may so call 
it, and the moral government, must be inseparably combined 
in one process, which cannot leave untouched the spiritual 
part. But then, it cannot be alleged that the astonishingly 
condescending and minute attention, Avhich we see to be exer- 
cised by the Divine Being upon a thousand small particulars 
in the nature and condition of man, is an agency so foreign to 
the interests of his soul, that no inference can be drawn from 
it relative to the probability of the highest possible expedient 
adopted for those interests by that Being. 

While, however, we think our author is perfectly warranted 
in the course of argument he has pursued, it is not to be denied 
that in a few instances he has, inadvertently, fallen into ex- 
pressions which do injustice to the surpassing degree and the 
transcendent mode of the manifestation of the divine goodness 



41 

as given in the great expedient of redemption. The relation 
prevailing through all the agencies of the divine goodness, 
comports, it is unnecessary to say, with a stupendous superi 
ority of degree in which that goodness is manifested in some 
parts of the government of the Almighty. One of the expres- 
sions we allude to occurs in the following passage : 

"Let such a revelation tell me as much as it may of God letting him- 
self down," [this refers to the economy of Mediation] " for the benefit of 
one sing-le province of his dominions, this is no more than what I see lying 
scattered, in numberless examples, before me ; and running through the 
whole line of my recollections ; and meeting me in every ivalk of observ. 
ation to which I can betake myself ; and, now that the microscope has 
unveiled the wonders of another region, I see strewed around me, with a 
profusion which baffles my every attempt to comprehend it, the evidence 
that there is no one portion of the universe of God too minute for his no- 
tice, or too humble for the visitations of his care." — p. 116. 

We have justly ascribed such expressions to " inadverten- 
cy," for the Doctor loses no occasion for enforcing the glo- 
rious supremacy of the dispensation of Christ over the other 
illustrations of the divine benignity ; nor can any terms be 
more animated than those which he has employed to this ef- 
fect, in some passages of the discourse on the argument of 
which we have so very disproportionately enlarged. 

The direct and conclusive argument against the infidel 
objection closes here. It rests its strength on indisputable 
matters of fact. And it leaves the infidel literally not an atom 
to stand upon ; for it animates even atoms to an implacable 
hostility against him. 

In drawing toM^ards an end of our analysis ofthese Discourses, 
we think it may not be amiss to repeat that Dr. Chalmers 
uniformly recognizes the complete sufficiency of the evidences 
for Christianity, independently, altogether, of the questions 
which he is discussing : insomuch that that evidence would 
remain invincible if his whole argument were judged or prov- 
ed to have failed ; — that is to say, if it were judged or proved, 
in the first place, that the astonishing expenditure, shall we 
call it, by the exercise of the Divine Attributes upon the indi- 
viduals of an inconceivable multitude of the most diminutive 
beings, and upon an inconceivable number of minute particu- 
lars and circumstances relating to man, (beings and circum- 
stances so stupendously small as parts of the universal system), 
is not enough to furnish any argument against the improbability 



42 Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 

of such an expedient for human happiness as that which reve- 
lation declares ; — and if it could be proved, in the next place, 
that this revealed economy of redemption disclaims any exten- 
sion, or, at least, is silent as to any extension, of its relations 
and utilities to any other portion of the great system extrane- 
ous to the sphere of human existence. 

Supposing the matter to be acknowledged to be thus, and 
supposing it to be then acknowledged, that we cannot under- 
stand how it can consist with the rules of proportion in the 
government of so vast a whole, for the Governor to do so great 
a thing for a most inconsiderable part, — this leaves the positive 
evidence in undiminished authority. This acknowledgment 
of ignorance amounts to this and no more, — that we cannot 
advance a certain philosophic argument, d j)riori, in corrobor- 
ation of that evidence. The absence of that argument de- 
tracts not a particle from the arguments which are present, and 
on which alone the cause ever professed to rest its demon- 
stration. This acknowledgment of ignorance is simply a 
confession that there is utter 7nystery on a side of the subject 
where it would have been gratifying to be able to find the 
means of raising a philosophic argument in favour of Chris- 
tianity. And, verily, mystery, as relative to the human under- 
standing, forms a marvellously pertinent allegation against an 
asserted and strongly evidenced fact in the Divine government 
of the universe ! 

The case is quite changed, if a man, instead of this ac- 
knowledgment of ignorance of the rule of proportion in that 
government, makes an avowal of knowledge ; if he says he 
can judge of that rule, and can see that the asserted fact in 
question is incompatible with it, and therefore must disbelieve 
that assertion, in contempt of all the alleged positive evidence. 
But we have then " a short method " with hfm. We have to 
tell him that he is to take the consequences of a flagrantly ir- 
religious, if not unphilosophical presumption ; for that he c«/i- 
no^ judge of that rule, and therefore it must be at his peril, that 
in the strength of his ignorant assumption to do so, he dares 
make light of that evidence. 

Perhaps it was not strictly necessary to make these remarks 
at this length ; Dr. Chalmers has several times used expres- 
sions to preserve it clearly in the reader's recollection, that 
the Christian evidence is not to be implicated in any way of 
dependence, in the smallest degree, in a course of argument 



Chalmers's astroxojiical discourses, 43 

wliicli is purely subsidiary ; but it may not be impertinent to 
liave marked the distinction in a somewhat more formal man- 
ner in the above sentences. That Christianity is in no possi- 
IdIc degree committed to hazard upon the force or failure of the 
pleading, is the more necessary to be kept in view in reading 
the latter discourses in the series, because in them the au- 
thor indulges in a train of speculation, supported in a great de- 
gree upon conjectures and a looser kind of analogies than those 
which have served him so well in the preceding part of the 
course ; conjectures, however, and analogies, which he does 
not mistake for certainties and direct proofs. 

It might have been a sufficient service to Christianity, to 
make good the negative argument in its favour, — to show the 
futility of attempting to support against it a charge of being 
absurd and incredible, even though it did, by the necessary 
constitution of such an economy, and by avowals in its own 
professed revelation, confine itself exclusively to the interests 
of mian. But the preacher concludes his Third Discourse 
with the assertion, that the vindication may be carried forward 
to a positive argument, confronting the infidel objection ; for 
that revelation avows, what reason might well surmise of such 
an economy, that it extends, in very important relations, to a 
much wider sphere, than that of the exclusive human interests. 
Accordingly, the Fourth Discourse proceeds to " The know- 
ledge of man's moral history in the distant places of the Cre- 
ation ;" and it is followed by another on " The sympathy that 
is felt for man in the distant places of creation." The wide 
sweep of reasoning and imagination over the distant regions 
of the moral world, terminates in the Sixth Discourse, " On 
the contest for an ascendency over man, amongst the higher 
orders of intelligence." 

With regard to the general object pursued through this lat- 
ter part of the course, we shall acknowledge at once that we 
are extremely sceptical, while we do most willing justice to 
the ingenious argumentation, and picturesque illustration, and 
buoyant and soaring fancy, which the preacher has so largely 
displayed in his progress. On a cool consideration of the sub- 
ject, it would seem that the scriptural grounds for supporting 
the speculation, are very slight ; and it may perhaps be sus- 
pected, that in the weight which our author rests on these, and 
in the degree of confidence with which he adduces arguments 
from analogy, and surmises of general probability, he may 



44 CHALMERS S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

have a little transgressed the rigid rules of speculation so just- 
ly applauded in the earlier discourses. 

The Fourth and Fifth Discourses have for their texts, — 
"Which things angels desire to look into ;" and, " I say unto 
you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that 
repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which 
need no repentance." No fact beyond the limits of our world 
is more prominent in the declarations of the Bible, than the 
existence of a high order of intelligences denominated angels. 
The equivocal and the lower application of the term in a numr 
ber of instances can deduct nothing from the palpable evidence 
of the fact. But Avho and vvhat are angels ? The effect of an 
assemblage of passages relating to them in the Bible, the de- 
scriptions, narratives, and allusions would seem to give an idea 
widely different from that of stationary residents in particular 
parts of the creation, — an idea, rather, of perpetual ministe- 
rial agency, in a diversified distribution of appointments, many 
of them occasional and temporary, in the fulfilment of which 
numbers of them visit or sojourn in this world. On the ground 
of analogy we may be allowed to surmise, that there may be 
spiritual ministers of this sublime order appointed to all other 
worlds in the creation. Now, as to the angels, that portion 
of them at least whose appointments have a relation to this 
world, there cannot be a moment's question whether they are 
acquainted with the condition of man, and take an interest in 
the economy of God's moral government over him. The 
Scriptures directly affirm it and in many ways imply it. But 
this proves nothing as to the knowledge or interest concerning 
man among the respective inhabitants of the distant parts of the 
creation. It is conceivable that there may be an indefinite 
reciprocation of intelligence among some of the angels commis- 
sioned to many regions of the universe, and they may, for any 
thing we can know, impart, in the scenes of their ministry, 
some portion of the intelligence thus reciprocated : on the con- 
trary, they may maintain an inviolable silence. But, indeed, 
though this inter-communication of these diversely commis- 
sioned agents may be conceived possible to some extent, no 
notion can be entertained of its approaching to completeness 
and universality. This would be to attribute faculties too vast 
for created intelligences, — too vast, because commensurate, in 
each individual, with the Avhole creation of God, if there be 
such ministerial agents deputed to every part of that creation. 



CHALMERS S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 45 

And however stupendously capacious their faculties might be, 
it is not conceivable that such a boundless diversity and mul- 
titude of contemplations and interests could consist with the 
devoted unremitting attention to the speciiic objects of their 
respective appointments. 

Next, with regard to the inhabitants^ properly so denomin- 
ated, of the unnumbered millions of distinct worlds in the cre- 
ation, (the truth of that theory being assumed,) there would 
seem to be insurmountable objections to the notion of their all 
receiving large information and feeling deep interest concern- 
ing the people and transactions of this planet. Let it be con- 
sidered, that it is beyond all douljt that in every world where 
the Creator has placed intelligent beings, (we leave out of the 
account whatever region it may be to which the fallen angels 
are consigned,) he has made successive, diversified, and won- 
derful manifestations of his attributes in the peculiar economy 
of that world itself. It is not conceivable that he should not 
have made continually such disclosures of himself to them, car- 
ried on such a government over them, furnished so many proofs 
and monitions of their relation to him, summoned their powers 
so imperiously to the utmost service to him of which they are 
capable, that they will have, within their own peculiar sphere, 
copious interest and employment for their faculties during a 
large portion of their time. It is even reasonable to suppose 
that, be these distinct inhabited spheres as numerous as the 
most ambitious conjecture of an angel can make them, there 
have been, in the history of each one of them, without excep- 
tion, some extraordinary and stupendous events and moral phe- 
nomena, standing in majestic pre-eminence for the contempla- 
tion of the inhabitants, and involving, as interventions of the 
Almighty, such glory, and miracle, and mystery, that " angels 
may desire to look into them." Why should it not be so ? 
It plainly gives a loftier idea of that Being, that he should do 
such great things in all the worlds of his dominion, than that 
he should do them in only a few instances, or in only one, and 
that he should do them in an endless diversity of form and 
mode, than in only one. But if the fact should be so, consid- 
er what a countless multitude of things will deserve, perhaps 
equally deserve, as signal manifestations of the Divinity, to be 
brought within the view of those tribes of intelligent creatures, 
whose expanded faculties and exalted position render it possi- 
ble for them to extend their adoring contemplations afar over 
3* 



46 CHALMERS S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

the dominions of God. It would follow, that their regards 
cannot be fixed on the economy of this world with so much 
of a concentration of attention and interest, as our author seems 
inclined to represent. 

As to the conjecture that many, or that all the worlds of the 
creation may have ^direct interest in the economy of redemp- 
tion, as having, possibly, like our race, incurred the crime and 
calamity of a moral lapse, the preacher only throws it out as one 
among a variety of imaginative surmisings, and is evidently 
not desirous to make it the basis, or a part of any positive the- 
ory. We think it cannot be entertained for one moment. The 
most submissive humility on all subjects relating to the divine 
government, and its mysteries and possibilities, cannot pre- 
clude an irresistible impression that the idea of so wide a preva- 
lence of evil in the universe, is absolutely incompatible with 
faith in the goodness of its Creator and Governor. Let any 
devout mind dwell awhile on the thought, and try whether it is 
not so. The prevalence of evil in only this one world, is an 
inexpressibly mysterious and awful fact ; insomuch, that all 
attempts to explain how it is consistent with the perfect good- 
ness of an Almighty Being, have left us in utter despair of any 
approach toward comprehending it. A pious spirit, not delu- 
ded by any of the vain and presumptuous theories of philosoph- 
ical or theological explanation, while looking toward this un- 
fathomable subject, can repose only in a general confidence 
that the dreadful fact, of the prevalence of evil in this planet, 
is in some unimaginable way combined with such relations, 
and such a state of the grand whole of the divine empire, that 
it is perfectly consistent with infinite goodness in Him that 
made and directs all things. But therefore this confidence 
cannot subsist on any supposition that the other regions of that 
empire, are also in any great proportion ravaged by this dire- 
ful enemy and destroyer of happiness. On any such suppo- 
sition, mystery changes into horror. 

By the way, this topic supplies a mighty argument for that 
theory of an ample plurality of worlds of intelligent beings, so 
probable on philosophic grounds, and so consonant with sub- 
lime ideas of the Creator's power and glory. Unless we ad- 
mit that theory, we assign to evil such a fearful proportion to 
the good in the condition of the intelligent creation, as to dark- 
en into intolerable gloom the collective view of its economy. 
How vast must the moral system be, to contain such a magni- 



CHALanSRs's ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 4T 

tude of good as to reduce this horrible mass of evil, existing 
and accumulating through thousands of years, to a mere cir- 
cumstance, scarcely discernible as an exception to the esti- 
mate, that " all is good," merged and lost in the glory of the 
comprehensive whole ! — Not, indeed, that by a reference to 
that unknown whole, we can in the smallest degree diminish 
the m.ystery of the existence of evil in this one world, — of its 
existence at all in the creation of an infinitely good and pow- 
erflil Being ; but we do, in this idea of the immensity of that 
creation, obtain a ground for the assurance, that the propor- 
tion of good among the creatures of the Almighty, may all but 
infinitely transcend that of evil. 

While we acknowledge that, for ourselves, we feel it neces- 
sary to entertain this idea of the immensity of the intelligent 
creation, in order to the full and consolatory effect of our faith 
in the goodness of the Supreme Being, we shall natui*ally 
wonder at the happier temperament of those theologians, if 
such there be, who meet with no very disquieting difficulty on 
this whole field of speculation ; who, while limiting their view 
of the intelligent creation to this world, (combined with the 
assemblages of angels and departed human spirits) and seeing 
in this world, through its whole duration hitherto, such a preva- 
lence of moral evil, that they deem an immense majority of the 
race consigned to eternal destruction, can yet, by the aid of some 
superficial theory of human volition, and some lightly assumed 
and presumptuous maxims respecting penal example in the or- 
der of the divine government, escape, with great apparent fa- 
cility, into great apparent complacency, from the overwhelm- 
ing awfulness of the economy. 

We should crave excuse for repetition while we try to select 
terms somewhat more precise, to say, that upon the theory of 
the immensity of the intelligent creation, we may take ground 
for the presumption that the rectitude and happiness, either ab- 
solutely perfect, or but slightly defective, of an inconceivable 
number of rational creatures, constitutes, over the vast gener- 
al scene, a direct and infinitely clear manifestation of the Cre- 
ator's goodness, leaving the solemn mystery, in this respect, 
to rest chiefly on this one small province of the universal do- 
minion ; that presumption aiding our adoration, though it does 
not extenuate the gloom of this mystery as respecting this 
world considered exclusively. 

But to return, for a moment, to the more immediate topics 



48 

of the Discourses. They glow with eloquent, poetical, strik- 
ing representations of the earnest impassioned interest with 
which all the good beings, of even so stupendous a multitude 
of worlds, may be conceived to regard our race, as a family 
lapsed from their allegiance and their felicity, and under a dis- 
pensation of recovery. There is no pretending to know how 
much it is reasonable to conjecture on such a subject. A 
great deal of generous regard for the human race, may, with 
sobriety of imagination, be attributed to those ministers of the 
Almighty, who are charged with beneficent ofiices in the econ- 
omy of this world. But when we think of the inhabitants of 
the universe, according to the computation all along maintain- 
ed, or rather the theory, which deties all computation ; when 
we consider that self-love must be the primary law of all cre- 
ated conscious existences, and that in all their localities and 
states this self-love will have its immediate sphere ; when we 
seek to imagine a medium of anouncement or representation 
by which our transactions and concerns shojild be vividly and 
protractedly impressed on the intellect and affections of the 
remotest foreigners of the creation ; and when we reflect, ac- 
cording to what we have already suggested, that for the con- 
templation of those tribes or orders, whose faculties may be of 
a capacity to admit, and whose happiness may be made great- 
ly to consist in their receiving, a sublimely enlarged know- 
ledge of the creation, there will be an infinity of memorable 
and amazing facts of the divine government, — when we con- 
sider all this, we confess we cannot, without being haunted 
with an invincible sense of very great extravagance, listen to a 
strain of eloquence which would go to the length of represent- 
ing all the wise and amiable intelligences of all the systems 
of the universe, as employing a large proportion of the energies 
of their being on the history and destiny of our race. 

The grand argument for assuming such a concentration of 
attention and interest upon this world, is the extraordinary 
and transcendent nature of the expedient for human redemp- 
tion. And well may that argument be urged to the extent of 
an assurance, that if the Blessed and Only Potentate wills that 
the most signal facts of his government in one world should be 
celebrated in others, this expedient must stand in the most em- 
inent order of the facts so celebrated. But when that ar- 
gument is pressed to so extreme a consequence, as in our 



CHALMERS S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 49 

author's fervid conjectures and assumptions, one or two con- 
siderations will suggest themselves. 

In the first place, there seems to be some inadvertency, 
common to him with many divines and pious men, in express- 
ing the mode of apprehending the interposition of Deity, as 
manifested in the person of the Messiah. He sometimes falls 
into language which would do little less than imply that the 
Divine Nature, as subsisting in that mysterious connexion with 
the human, subjected itself to a temporary limitation, and, if we 
may apply such a term, monopoly, to that one purpose and 
agency of human redemption ; as if Deity, so combined, con- 
tracted, and depressed itself from the state of Deity in the ab- 
stract, sustaining some suspension of the exercise of those in- 
finite attributes which can be limited to no one object, or op- 
eration, or world, for one instant. — Not that any such limit- 
ation is intended so to be implied ; but, under the defective ef- 
fect of a language which bears a semblance of such an import, 
the argument in question (that from the pre-eminent marvel- 
lousness and benevolence of the expedient for redemption) is 
carried to an exaggerated conclusion. Of this deceptive cha- 
racter, we think, is the parallel which begins in page 150, be- 
tween this great act of Divine interposition, and the supposed 
instance of a monarch of an extensive empire, who should, for 
a brief space of time, a few hours, or a day, (which would, as 
the author remarks, be infinitely longer in proportion to the 
whole time of his reign, than the duration of the mediatorial 
period on earth as compared with the eternity of the divine 
government,) lay aside the majesty and the concerns of his 
general government, to make a A^sit of compassion to the hum- 
ble cottage of some distressed or guilty family. It is obvious 
that this illustration should imply (or the virtue of the parallel 
is lost) that "in turning him to our humble habitations," (page 
152) " the King, Eternal, Immortal, and Invisible," (in these 
absolute terms of Divinity, the visitant is designated,) did in 
some manner withdraw and descend from the full amplitude of 
the glory and exercise of the unalienable attributes of Deity. 
But surely, whatever was the mode of that mysterious com- 
bination of the divine with an inferior nature, we are required 
religiously to beware of all approach toward such an idea as 
that of a modification of the Supreme nature, and to preserve 
the solemn idea of a Being, absolute, unalterable, and necessa- 
rily always in entire possession and excercise of all that consti- 



50 Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 

tutes its supremacy and perfection. But the divine nature 
"manifested" in the human, in the person of the Messiah, con- 
tinued then and ever in such an unlimited state of glory and ac- 
tion, that it might be then, and at every moment of the media- 
torial dispensation, making innumerable other manifestations 
of itself, and performing infinite wonders of grace and power 
altogether foreign, are the remote scenes of their display, from 
this world and the interposition for its redemption ; an inter- 
position, which could in no manner interfere with any other 
interpositions, of a kind indefinitely dissimilar from it and one 
other, which the Sovereign Agent might will to effect in other 
regions. 

Since, therefore, the inexplicable indwelling in the person 
of the Mediator, could in no manner affect the plenary presence 
and energy of the divine Nature, as while so indwelling, per- 
vading also all the other realms of the universe ; and since, 
while that mighty essence imparted immeasurable virtue to the 
mediatorial work and sacrifice, it yet could not sustain any dif- 
ficulty, degradation, or injury ; — as the griefs, the dreadful in- 
flictions for the sin of the world, fell exclusively upon a subor- 
dinate being, belonging to our own economy ; — there would 
not seem to be an imperious reason for the universality of the 
inhabitants of the creation to be occupied with a paramount in- 
terest in the transaction, though so illustrious a display of the 
Almighty's justice and mercy toward one section of his domin- 
ion. 

In the next place, we would notice a still more striking inad- 
vertency in our excellent author's representations. In main- 
taining the probability of the knowledge and celebration of the 
wonderful expedient for the redemption of man, far through 
the numberless abodes of intellectual existence, he indulges 
habitually a strain of descriptive sentiment wdiich would be 
precisely applicable, if that economy were designed to be, or 
were in fact, redeemingly comprehensive of the whole world of 
men. But then, is it applicable, as the awful truth stands dis- 
played before us 1 He keeps quite out of view what that divine 
intervention was not designed to accomplish, as made evi- 
dent in the actual state in life, and after death, of a dread pro- 
portion of the human race ; and forms his conceptions of the 
manner of interest with which innumerable pure and happy 
tribes of the universe may be imagined to contemplate our 
world, as if this reality of things should not be apparent to them. 



DISCOURSES. 51 

It is too obvious how deeply this reality affects the ground of 
his sanguine and exulting presumptions of such an immensely 
extended interest and gratulation. 

We should advert to those passages of Scripture which he 
has collected in page 147. 

" And while we, whose prospect reaches not beyond the narrow limits 
of the corner we occupy, look on the dealings of God in the world, as car- 
rying in them all the insignificancy of a provincial transaction ; God him- 
self, whose eye reaches to places which our eye hath not seen, nor our 
ear heard of, neither hath it entered into our imagination to conceive, 
stamps a universality on the whole matter of the Christian salvation, by 
such revelations as the following : — That he is to gather together, in one, 
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are m earth, 
even in him ; — and that at tiie name of Jesus every knee should bow, of 
things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth ; — and 
that by him God reconciled all things unto himself, whether they be 
things in earth, or things in heaven." 

We do not know where to seek a rule of interpretation for 
these passages, the most essential expressions of which — " all 
things" — and " things in heaven" — are among the most inde- 
finite phrases in the Bible. It cannot be proved that their 
meaning does not comprehend more than such a portion of su- 
perhuman beings as may be placed within a circumscribed 
economy appropriate to our world — as some of the angels evi- 
dently are. But the circumstance which is fatal to every am- 
bitious interpretation of them in their higher reference, is, the 
necessity of putting an exceedingly restricted one on them in 
their lower. How greatly less must be intended than the lit- 
eral import of the expression," all things in earth," is shown 
in the history and the actual and prospective state of the earth's 
inhabitants. 

We must not prolong a course of remarks in which we are 
sensible of having been unpardonably prolix, by commenting 
on the Discourse, " On the contest for an ascendancy over 
man, among the higher orders of intelligence. The first part 
of it is employed, at rather perhaps too great a length for a 
printed work, in repetition and recapitulation ; but this might 
be highly proper in the discourse as delivered, at a consider- 
able distance of time from the former ones in the series. The 
exhibition of the warfare is in a high tone of martial energy. 
And what cause we have to wish, as Dr. Chalmers did in an 
able sermon, published a few years since, that the spirit and 
splendour of oratory and poetry might, through a heaven-in- 



52 Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 

flicted fatally, desert, henceforward, all attempted celebrations 
of any other warfare than that between the cause of God and 
the power of evil, as put forth in infernal or in human agency. 

We have no disposition to accompany this portion of our 
ardent speculator's career, with exceptions to what we may 
deem its excesses of sentiment, and imagery, and confident 
conjecture. What we are most tempted to remark upon, in 
the description of the great contest carrying on between the in- 
telligent powers of light and darkness, for domination over 
the destiny of man, is a something too much like an implica- 
tion that this destiny can really be, in any possible measure, a 
depending question between created antagonists, or that it can 
appear to them, on either side, to be so, while both of them 
must be aware of the absolute certainty that the Avill of the Al- 
mighty is inlinitely sovereign over all things. Indeed, this 
consideration renders it profoundly mysterious that there can 
be any contest at all. And to say that the existence of the con- 
test is mysterious, is saying in effect, that it is impossible to 
attain a probable conception how the parties are actuated. 
The sense of this has always, with us, interfered with the in- 
terest of the former part of the Paradise Lost. There appears 
an enormous absurdity in the presumptions and calculations on 
which the delinquent spirits adopt and prosecute their enter- 
prise ; an absurdity, we mean, on the part of the poet, in mak- 
ing them to act from calculations, which it w^as absolutely im- 
possible their enlarged understandings could entertain. 

Nevertheless, we have the testimony, express and by diver- 
sified implications, of the Holy Scriptures, for the fact of a for- 
midable moral dissension among the higher order of intelli- 
gences, in which the condition of the human race has been 
awfully involved. 

The concluding Discourse is on a topic of very serious and 
melancholy interest, — the possibility to minds of feeling, and 
taste, and imagination, of being elated to noble contempla- 
tions, and afiected by fine emotions, of a nature that shall seem 
to be intimately related to genuine piety, and may easily be 
mistaken for it, while yet the heart is destitute of all that is es- 
sential in the experience of religion. Nothing could be better 
judged than the placing of this subject in broad and promi- 
nent view at the close of such a train of contemplations. How 
possible is it that hundreds of readers may have expatiated in 
thought with emotions of sublime and delightful solemnity, on 



Chalmers's astronomical discourses. 53 

the scene of astronomical magnificence displayed in the intro- 
ductory Discourses ; and inasmuch as the glory of that scene 
is the glory of the Almighty Creator, may have deemed their 
emotions to partake of, or be identical with, religious devo- 
tion, — a sentiment and a state to which there were tests exist- 
ing to convict them of being strangers. The preacher has 
forcibly illustrated, in many other forms, this treacherous sem- 
blance of religious vitality. And the feeling awakened at the 
view of so many interesting emotions, still useless, and by 
their deceptive influence, worse than useless, to the subjects of 
them, is so mournful, that the reader is almost impelled to re- 
lieve himself by seeking cause to think that some of the repre- 
sentations are over-wrought, and some of the decisions too 
severe ; and he is tempted to be gratified at obtaining an al- 
leviation of the painful effect of some of the stern adjudgments, 
at the expense of the judge, whose occasional violences of ora- 
tory, and negligences of discrimination, afford a hint that his 
sentence cannot be without appeal. Much important and alarm- 
ing truth, however, there is in this Discourse. It contains 
the elements of an eminently useful and warning instruction. 
But the subject requires a much more elaborate and definite 
discussion ; and we wish Dr. Chalmers may take another op- 
portunity oftreatingit formally with the deliberate, best exer- 
tion of his mind. 

On the merely literary character of his composition we 
shall content ourselves with a very few words. We cannot 
dissemble that we wish he would put his style under a strong- 
ly alterative discipline. No readers can be more sensible to 
its glow and richness of colouring, and its not unfrequent hap- 
py combinations of words ; but there is no denying that it is 
guilty of a rhetorical march, a sonorous pomp, a " showy same- 
ness ;" a want, therefore, of simplicity and flexibility ; withal, 
a perverse and provoking grotesqueness, a frequent descent, 
strikingly incongruous with the prevailing elatedness of tone, to 
the lowest colloquialism, and altogether an unpardonable li- 
cense of strange phraseology. The number of uncouth, and 
fantastic, and we may fairly say barbarous phrases, that might 
be transcribed, is most unconscionable. Such a style needs 
a strong hand of reform ; and the writer may be assured it 
contains life and soul enough to endure the most unrelenting 
process of correction, the most cumpulsory trials to change its 
form, without hazard of extinguishing its spirit. 



54 JOHN HOENE TOOKE. 

11. 

JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 



Memoirs of John Home Tooke, interspersed with Original Docu- 
ments. By Alexander Stephens, Esq. 

That eager desire which the decease of very distinguished 
men so commonly excites among the inquisitive part of the 
community, to obtain ample memoirs of their lives and illus- 
trations of their opinions and characters, must have been 
greatly repressed with respect to the very extraordinary indi- 
vidual who is the subject of these volumes. There cannot 
but have been a very general conviction, that it was as much 
in vain to expect a really faithful history and impartial estimate 
of him as of Oliver Cromwell or the French Revolution, 
Even if such a book were to appear, it is probable it would 
have but few approving readers. In the minds of a very large 
proportion of reading Englishmen, the name of Home Tooke 
awakens ideas of almost every thing hateful or dreadful in 
politics and morals. A more moderate class, though giving 
him some considerable credit for honesty of intention, and su- 
periority to the lowest sort of self-interested motives — adopting 
too, to a limited extent, the principles on which he waged his 
political wars, and regarding him with something of that kind- 
ness which we are disposed to indulge toward men in adver- 
sity — feel nevertheless such disgust at some of the connexions 
in which he acted at some periods of his career, at the incon- 
sistency of his character with his spiritual profession while he 
exercised it, and at that later licentiousness of which his irreli- 
gion tended to secure him from being ashamed, that they can- 
not with any complacency hear him praised, while they see 
and despise the injustice of that undiscerning and unmixed 
opprobrium with which they hear him abused. There may be 
a small party ready to make light of all his faults and vices, 
and to extol him as the mirror of integrity, an apostle of liber- 



JOHN IIORNE TOOKE. 55 

ty, a model of orators, a prince of philosophers. — Not one per- 
son, probably, of these different classes, will ever alter his 
o[)inion of this remarkable character. The subject is old, the 
impression has long been made and settled, and just according 
to that impression will the biographer's performance be pro- 
nounced upon, instead of the impression itself being changed 
by the biographer's representations. 

Though ^ve should be glad, certainly, that there were any 
chance of our ever obtaining, however unavailing it might be 
for rectifying public opinion, a perfect life of this extraordina- 
ry man — a work written by a contemporary, endowed with 
great sagacity, a rational lover of liberty, a zealous friend of 
learning, and a true disciple of Christianity, and privileged, if 
such a man could have been so, with a long personal acquain- 
tance with his subject — yet we can make ourselves tolerably 
content under the certainty that such a work will never appear. 
The subject in question will not long continue to excite any 
considerable interest. There is a vast number of things the 
world can afford to forget. The train of events and of tran- 
siently conspicuous personages is passing on with such impe- 
tuous haste, and the crowd of interesting or portentous appear- 
ances is so multiplying in the prospect, that our attention is 
powerfully withdrawn from the past : and there is something 
almost melancholy in considering how soon men of so much 
figure, in their time, as Home Tooke, and even his greater 
contemporaries, will be reduced to the diminished forms of 
what will be regarded with the indifference, almost, of remote 
history. 

In the mean time, we might be tolerably satisfied with the 
information conveyed in the present work, if it were not so 
unconscionably loaded with needless matters. The author, 
though too favourable to his subject, is however much nearer 
to impartiality than probably any of the enemies of that sub- 
ject will ever be, in recording the life, or commenting on the 
principles. 

The work begins with the introduction of names which 
some ingenuity might be thought requisite to connect with the 
subject, if we were not aware that writing biography is an 
undertaking of such very questionable legitimacy, as to make 
it, in setting off, highly politic, in order to get fairly and unob- 
structed into the course, to stun and quell the prepared cavillers 
with the imposing sound of such names as Plutarch, Tacitus, 



56 JOHN HORXE TOOKE. 

Bossuet, and "our own Bacon Lord Veruiam."* Several 
pages are then employed on the subject, apparently, of show- 
ing that the rank to be assigned, in biography, to distinguish 
talents, should not depend on the aristocratic or plebeian de- 
scent of their possessor. The author manages this topic so 
laboriously as to excite some little suspicion that he would, 
after all, have been better pleased to tell that his subject, John 
Home, was the son of a duke, than that he was the son of a 
poulterer in Newport Market. A paragraph like the following 
does not exemplify exactly the right way of effecting what it 
appears intended for. 

" A tradition still exists in the family, that their ancestors possessed 
great wealth, and were settled on their own lands at no great distance 
from the metropolis. A more ingenious biographer, by a plausible refer, 
ence to county histories, might have been able, perhaps, to have traced 
their origin to a pretty remote period, and, with a little reasonable con- 
jecture, it would have been easy to have ascertained the loss of the patri- 
monial estates during the wars between the rival Roses. Or the industry 
of a modern genealogist might have contrived, from the identity of names, 
in addition to some trivial and incidental circumstances, to have shed the 
lustre of episcopacy on their race, and, by means of Dr. George Home, 
Bishop of Norwich, reflected a borrowed renown on his new relatives. 
But such arts, even if allowable, are unnecessary here ; for the gramma- 
rian, who forms the subject of the present volumes, is fairly entitled to be 
considered as a. 7wun substantive, whose character and consequence might 
be impaired, rather than increased, by the addition of any unnecessary 
adjunct." 

As to the latter of these supposed expedients for conferring 
adventitious consequence on that proud " substantive," we 
should have thought that no one who had been a personal ob- 
server of his moral temperament, could have entertained the 
idea, long enough to put it in words, of importance being added 
to him by even a real relationship to the Bishop of Norwich, 
Mdthout being rebuked by the image of that bitterly sarcastic 
look with which the said " substantive" would have heard any 
such suggestion. 

He was born on the 25th of June, 1736. Whatever other 
reasons he might have for complacency in his parentage, 
there was one that could not fail to be always peculiarly grati- 
fying to him. His father's premises were contiguous to those 
of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the father of the present King. 
The officers of the. Prince's household thought it would be a 

* When will writers learn to sweep their pages clear of idle expletives ? 



JOHN irOENE TOOKE. 57 

gfeat convenience to them to have an outlet to the street 
through a certain wall which belonged to the poulterer. With- 
out ceremony therefore they ordered a door- way to be broken 
in it, and paid no attention when he went to remonstrate. He 
at last boldly appealed to the law, and found its administration 
upright enough to defend him against the encroachment. Be- 
ing, however, zealously attached to the house of Brunswick, 
he had no sooner obtained this decision than he handsomely 
gave the Prince the desired accommodation. 

John, being a favourite and a boy of promise, was placed at 
Westminster school, and afterwards, for five or six years, at 
Eton ; where, however, it has not been discovered that he 
gained any literary honours, or made any efibrts to gain them. 
There are traces of evidence, nevertheless, of great prematu- 
rity. " On interrogating," says our author, " an old lady, with 
a view of discovering if any thing remarkable had occurred 
during his childhood, I happened to ask, whether she had 
known Mr. Home Tooke when a boy." " No !" was the re- 
ply, " he never was a boy ; with him there was no interval 
between childhood and age ; he became a man all at once 
upon us !" 

He is believed to have become a diligent student at college, 
w^here he passed several years ; and whence he removed to 
undertake, to the great surprise and regret of his biographer, 
the office of usher in a school at Blackheath. 

It was at the " earnest request of his father, who was a 
zealous member of the church of England, that he entered, at 
length, into holy orders, and was ordained a deacon. It was 
not till a subsequent period that he qualified himself for holding 
preferment by passing through the usual ceremonies incident 
to the priesthood." And in the interval between the two 
points in his progress, and after he had made a commence- 
ment as a curate, he entirely abandoned all clerical intentions, 
and determined to enter on the law. 

At the Inns of Courts he had for contemporary students and 
familiar associates Dunning and Kenyon, the one of whom 
was afterwards to be his defender and the other his judge, but 
whose more prosperous fortunes of subsequent life could not 
then have been prognosticated on any ground of family, or tal- 
ent, or literary attainment. In this last particular both are 
asserted to have been very greatly his inferiors. And, to 
judge of their command of money by their almost rival frugal- 



58 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

ity, we may conclude they were all under an equal necessity 
of submitting to calculate their future successes solely on their 
abilities and exertions. In the point of frugality it should be 
mentioned that there was a small difference in favour of the 
individual who was so very eminent for that virtue in later 
life. 

" I have been repeatedly assured, by Mr. Home Tooke, that they were 
accustomed to dine together, during the vacation, at a Utile eating house, 
in the neighbourhood uf Chancery -lane, for the sum of sevenpence half- 
penny each. ' As to Dunning and myself,' added he, ' we were generous, 
for we gave the girl who waited on us a penny a-picce ; but Kenyon, 
who always knew the value of money, sometimes rewarded her with a 
halfpenny, and sometimes with a promise !' " 

But in spite of his strong inclination to the law, the singular 
adaptedness of his powers for the most successful prosecution 
of it, this formal preparation for it, and this companionship 
with some of the most fortunate of its young proficients. Home 
was the captive, beyond redemption, of another destiny. 

" His family, which had never sanctioned this attachment," (to the 
law) " deemed the church far more eligible as a profession, and he was at 
length obliged to yield, notwithstanding his relutance, to the admonitions, 
the entreaties, and the persuasions, of his parents. It seems not at all 
improbable that a friendly compromise took place on this occasion ; and 
that an assurance was given of some permanent provision, in case he con- 
sented to relinquish his legal pursuits. 

"Acccordingly, in 1760, Mr. Home was admitted a priest of the 
church of England, by Dr. John Thomas, Bishop of Sarum ; and in the 
course of the same year he obtained the living of New Brentford, which 
was purchased for him by his father." — " It is said to have produced be- 
tween £-2l){) and £300 per annum. This income he enjoyed during elev- 
en years, and in the course of that period he not only did duty at Brent- 
ford, but also preached in many of the churches of the metropolis." 

In 1763, he was prevailed upon to become what he was ac- 
customed to denominate a hear-leade?', that is, the travelling 
tutor of a young gentleman. With a son of the famous Elwes 
he passed more than a year in France, with vastly higher 
gratification, no doubt, than any that could have been afforded 
by the occupations of a parish priest. It is not, however, to 
be understood that he scorned all the proprieties of his profes- 
sion. We may transcribe without being bound to feel any 
great reverence for the biographer's judgment in theology, his 
account of Mr. Home's clerical ministrations. 

We need not remark on the extreme ignorance betrayed in 



JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 59 

a passage which represents a man as avoiding controversial 
points, and keeping clear of mystery by — confining himself to 
"the truths contained in the Scriptures, and the received 
opinions of the Anglican church !" 

But whatever may be thought of that portion of Home's ser- 
vices to his people which he performed under a solemn eccle- 
siastical obligation, he claims the most animated praise for 
what he did beyond the terms of this obligation. " He actu- 
ally studied the healing art, for the express purpose of reliev- 
ing the complaints of such as were unable to pay for the assis- 
tance of an apothecary. To attain this end he carefully 
studied the works of Boerhaave, and the best practical physi- 
cians of that day ; and having learned to compound a few me- 
dicines, he formed a little dispensary at the parsonage -house, 
where he supplied the wants of his numerous and grateful pa- 
tients." It is added, that "he was accustomed, at times, to 
plume himself on the cures he had performed, and often ob- 
served, ' that though physic was said to be a problematical art, 
he believed that his medical were far more efficacious than 
his spiritual labours.' " — Sufficient care, however, was taken 
that these occupations should not trench on the time and atten- 
tion due to the "Rule and Exercise" of gentility and fashion. 
He was fond of gay company ; and as some slight drawback 
from the praises earned in his theological and medical capaci- 
ty, it is in the softest, gentlest form of blame acknowledged, 
" that he was, at one period, accused of being too fond of 
cards, and of spending too much of his time at ombre, qua- 
drille, and whist." The biographer did not think himself 
called upon to tell that the clergyman used to spend the Sun- 
day afternoon in this canonical employment, wdth a preference, 
for honesty's sake, of a room looking to the street, and with 
every kind of blind removed from the windows. But then 
what an excellent chance we have of knowing, from biogra- 
phers, all that is material to an estimate of men's characters. 
Friends will not make plain confessions of things which we 
know not whether we ought to believe when asserted in the 
accusations of enemies. 

Our author observes that a man of Mr. Home's opinions 
might perhaps have been expected to " lean to the Dissenters," 
on account of the more republican cast of their church econo- 
my, and their entertaining a spirit favourable to civil liberty. 
No. He deemed the gradation of ranks in the national 



60 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

establishment well calculated for the production, as well as the 
reward, of "merit and virtue ;" and, 

" Notwithstanding the charges afterwards adduced against him, on the 
score of orthodoxy, no one was more violent against schismatics of all de- 
scriptions." " Out of the pale of its faith" (that of the established church) 
" he never was very ready to admit of any ecclesiastical desert whatever." 
—Vol. i. p. 39. 

Mr. Stephens could perhaps have explained on what theory 
of the subject the established church could have a strenuous 
advocate in an utter contemner of its creed. But that a man 
holding such notions concerning religion as Mr. Home Tooke 
notoriously did, should be violent against schismatics, is one of 
the most scandalous inconsistencies in the whole records of 
human perversity. To think that a man so fierce (and surely 
we do not censure this animosity) against meanness, hypocri- 
sy, time-serving, and treachery, could also find an object of 
antipathy and reprobation in that conscientiousness which 
would not dishonestly and treacherously profess and take the 
emolument of an adherence to a church, while seriously disap. 
proving its tenets or institutions ! and that he could, the while, 
give himself all manner of credit for rectitude of judgment and 
moral feeling ! But it is thus that irreligion is very apt to 
become an occultation of common sense in matters where reli- 
gion is concerned. 

Possibly, however, there was somewhat more sense in this 
than may be obvious just at first sight. It would not be very 
strange if a man who rejects religion should be very desirous 
to obtain that sort of countenance to his rejection, which he 
would seem to receive from the character of those who pro- 
fessed to espouse it, while they were all found devoid of prin- 
ciple. He may therefore very naturally be vexed there should 
be men to prove by example that Christianity is a promoter of 
integrity of conduct. 

Reverting to the biographer's assertion, that Mr. Home 
Tooke thought the hierarchy " well calculated to incite to," as 
well as " reward, virtue and merit ;" we may very fairly make 
it a question whether we do not get nearer his real opinion in 
the following extract from a letter he wrote to Wilkes, from 
one of the stages of his first journey to France. 

"You are entering into a correspondence with a parson, and I am 
greatly apprehensive lest that title should disgi^t ; but give rae leave to 



JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 61 

assure you I am not ordained a hypocrite. It is true I have suffered the 
infectious hand of a bishop to be waved over me ; whose imposition, like 
the sop given to Judas, is only a signal for the devil to enter. 

''I allow, that usually at that touch — ' fugiunt pudor verumque, fidesque. 
In quorum subeunt locum fraudes, dolique, insidiaque," &c. &c., but I 
hope I have escaped the contagion; and, if I have not, if you should at 
any time discover the black spot under the tongue, pray kindly assist me 
to conquer the prejudices of education and profession." — p. 76. 

We have little doubt that this indelible record may be taken 
as the genuine expression of his estimate of the institution to 
which he belonged, and was always mortified to belong ; and 
therefore as a measure of the honesty, the equity, and the de- 
corum with which he could be "violent against schismatics." 
He boldly declared there was nothing in this letter which he 
should be ashamed to have generally known, when he under- 
stood that the Avorthy friend to whom it had been addressed 
threatened to publish it, in revenge of some offence he had 
chosen to take at the writer. But nevertheless, he must have 
been excessively vexed at his own indiscretion, even though 
he had not entertained (it does not appear whether he ever did 
entertain) any ambitious designs on the higher stations in the 
church, designs to which the public disclosure of such senti- 
ments would inevitably be fatal. He would be more mortified 
at being exhibited in this attitude of humiliation. A proud 
man, an able man, a learned man, and a knowing man, thus al- 
most prostrate before such a piece of human nature as Wilkes ! 
indignantly but impotently endeavouring to tear off his sacer- 
dotal vestments ; making a bitter but poor jest of ceremonies 
which he had been obliged to maintain the utmost gravity while 
undergoing; earnest to divert the anticipated sneer from himself 
to his fraternity and sacred vocation ; eager to prove that though 
he had professed to be "moved by the Holy Ghost," he was not, 
he really and in good faith was not, unworthy of the friendship 
of one of the most abandoned profligates on earth ; entreating 
to be allowed tc make a sacrifice of whatever in his educa- 
tion and chosen profession might be displeasing to this regent 
of doctrines and morals ; and hoping to be at length, through 
his auspicious influence, redeemed from the degradation at 
least, if he could not be delivered from the fact, of being a 
priest ! 

His feelings with regard to his profession would be com- 
bined with many other sentiments to make him exult in the 
prospect of another travelling adventure, which was to extend 
4 



62 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

through the most interesting parts of France and Italy. He 
went again in the capacity of tutor to a young man of fortune. 
He left his canonicals at Dover, and " assumed the habit, ap- 
pearance, and manners of a private gentleman." " Nor 
ought it to be omitted," says the biogi-apher, " that, on both 
this and the former occasion, the young gentleman entrusted 
to his care, never once dreamed that he was under his in- 
spection ; but deemed himself honoured, as well as obliged, 
by the permission to accompany him in the capacity of a 
friend." Wilkes, in one of the letters in which the grand 
quarrel between the two friends was publicly fought out, al- 
ludes to Home's residence in Italy, with strong intimations 
respecting his morals, and challenges him to venture a refer-^ 
ence on that subject to an^ — " Italian gentleman now in Lon- 
don," a challenge which the clergyman does not notice in his 
reply. 

However this may be, he seems, on his return, to have taken 
to the pulpit with a considerable degree of activity, and with 
a distinction which might soon have grown to popularity and 
celebrity. 

" There is abundance of proof, indeed, that Mr. Home was now con- 
sidered an admirable preacher, and that his eloquence only wanted culti- 
vation, to place him among the most successful of our English divines. 
But it was in orthodox and doctrinal discourses that he chiefly excelled, 
and he is accordingly reported to have distinguished himself greatly by 
his exhortations before confirmation, on which occasion, by mingling 
sound argument with kind and affectionate persuasion, he never failed to 
make a suitable impression on all who heard him. In short, he might not 
only have been greatly respected, as a popular pastor, but was still in a 
fair way to become one of the pillars of the Anglican church, when a me- 
morable event occurred in the political world, and proved an insurmounta- 
ble, though not, perhaps, an unexpected obstacle to his future preferment." 

This event was the famous Middlesex election, in which 
the government was braved, encountered, and defeated by a 
daring mock patriot, of ruined fortune, obnoxious to the laws, 
and of infamous morals. 

The leading facts of that transaction are sufficiently known. 
Wilkes, though he carried the election, was rejected by the 
House of Commons. He had the same success a second, 
third, fourth, and fifth time, in quick succession, and still met 
the same repulse. Colonel Luttrell was his opponent in the 
fifth election, and was declared duly elected, though he had 
only about a fourth part of the votes. It is stated that the 



JOHN HOENE TOOKE. 63 

mob became so furious on this, that the Colonel would have 
lost his life but for the personal interposition of Mr. Home, 
who rescued him and conducted him to a place of safety. Our 
author observes, 

" This generous conduct must surely be allowed to have been worthy 
of applause ; but, such is the deadly enmity of political contests, that it 
rendered him ever after suspected by many of that party, and, on a future 
occasion, was frequently quoted agamst him as an indelible disgrace," 

Home put forth the whole force of his mind in the prepara- 
tion for this great contest, and in the management of it ; and 
to his able and indefatigable exertions the biographer mainly 
attributes the energy and success of the popular cause. His 
courage, which was of the coolest and lirmest kind, shrunk 
from no hazard : his resources of argument and declamation 
were inexhaustible : his personal applications had every diver- 
sity of address and persuasion : his very moderate pecuniary 
means were freely devoted : and his measures and exertions 
to preserve good order, and prevent all violence, beyond that 
of language, on the popular side, proved how well he was 
qualified to manage the populace, and how much influence he 
must have previously acquired over their minds. This care 
to prevent violence was strongly contrasted with the conduct 
of the government party, who hired and embodied a gang of 
ruffians for the purpose of perpetrating it. In consequence, 
several unoffending persons were desperately wounded, and 
one man was killed. Home's zeal and intrepidity were emi- 
nently displayed in his unsuccessful efforts to bring to justice 
the criminals in this and one or two other deeds of partly sim- 
ilar nature. Why such efforts should be unsuccessful, when 
those criminals were ascertained, it is not difficult to conjec- 
ture. 

The share he took in this contest would be to him of the 
nature of an experiment on his own powers ; and the manner 
in which he had borne himself through so various and turbu- 
lent a warfare, would greatly confirm and augment his con- 
sciousness of extraordinary strength. While this would tend 
to impart a tone of provocation and defiance, the exercise of 
so ardent, and in his constant opinion, so virtuous an hostility, 
excited a passion for war which could not in a mind constituted 
of such " stern stuff" as his, become extinct as soon as the 
particular occasion was past. A heated piece of iron retains 



64 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

its power to burn longer than slighter substances. The pas- 
sion was prolonged in a keen watchfulness to find an ene- 
my, and a fierce promptitude to attack him.. When Ave add to 
this, that from his childhood his hatred had been directed 
against the sins of governments, we shall not wonder to find 
him, from the period in question, the unrelenting persecutor 
of statesmen, and their corruptions, and their adherents. 
Among the first objects of this inextinguishable spirit of war 
was a Right Honourable person of the name of Onslow, a 
member of administration, who was publicly called to account 
for an imputed delinquency in so peremptory a style, that he 
was provoked to make his ultimate answer by a prosecution. 
Home, defeated at first, stoutly fought the matter through the 
courts to a third trial, in which he was completely victorious ; 
and it was a victory over a much greater personage than his 
immediate antagonist, for he defeated Lord Mansfield, and in 
a manner so marked and decisive that it must have caused 
that personage extreme mortification. This was a proud 
commencement of that series of interviews which Home was 
destined to have with his lordship, under the relation of judge 
and culprit, and might contribute not a little to his maintain- 
ing ever afterwards such an attitude of intrepidity and equality 
as no other man did, in the same relation, to the great despot 
of law. 

There awaited him, however, a much more vexatious, and 
less eventually prosperous contest, in his public correspondence 
with Wilkes. It will depend on the various degrees of inter- 
est felt by readers about Home's history and character to be 
grateful to the biographer, to forgive him, or to condemn him, 
for inserting nearly the whole of this correspondence, occupy- 
ing about a hundred and forty pages. We profess to place our- 
selves, not without a very great effort, in the middle class of these 
three. We think a short analysis might have competently 
exhibited the merits of the question, and would have satisfied 
at least half of the readers of the work. If it was presumed 
that a considerable number would really wish for more, the 
entire correspondence might have been printed separately for 
their sake. But probably it is a better trade calculation to 
load every copy with the additional cost of this republished 
correspondence, than to sell the work for so much less, and 
leave it to the option of the purchasers to send also for this 
supplemental part. 



JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 65 

It contains a great deal of able writing, but is so completely 
of a personal nature as that it would require the combatants to 
be of much greater historical importance to give it any per- 
manent interest. It explains why they became virulent and 
implacable enemies, and exhibits a graceless picture of strong 
talent on the one side, and alert talent on the other, earnestly 
exerted and delighted to tear, and stab, and poison, and ready, 
apparently, to join in a most devout prayer to the nether world 
for more efficient implements of offence. Home's letters are 
composed with a grave, intense argumentative acrimony. 
Wilkes's, with still more deadly rancour, are more volatile, 
satiric, affectedly careless, and captiously smart: they display 
the boldest impudence of depravity, with wit enough to render it 
both amusing and mischievous. In point of success, relative- 
ly to the main matters in dispute, there is no manner of com- 
parison between the two. Home's part of the correspondence, 
though it may not completely vindicate himself in all points, 
perfectly explodes his opponent to atoms. It proves this noisy 
demagogue, who scorned the people as much as he gulled 
them, and hated men in the proportion in which he had re- 
ceived any favours from them, was one of the most worthless 
articles ever put in the human figure. Nevertheless, it seems 
that, in general estimation, Wilkes was the victor. 

We cannot comprehend on what ground " superior skill" is 
attributed to Wilkes in this conflict ; nor should we have known 
where to seek a proof of his " more intimate knowledge of 
mankind," if something like such proof had not presented itself 
in the circumstance of his confidence, that he should be able 
to maintain himself in favour with the multitude in spite of 
those exposures by which his adversary probably expected, 
though perhaps with less confidence, to destroy his popularity. 
Indeed Home did himself, a little while afterwards, almost 
acknoMdedge that his enemy was the more knowing man, 
when he said, in one of his letters to Junius, "I am sometimes 
half inclined to suspect that Mr. Wilkes has formed a truer 
judgment of mankind than I have." But really, in glancing 
through the controversy now, in the indiflerence of feeling 
with which matters so long past and comparatively unimpor- 
tant are regarded, we think almost every reader will allow 
that Home might, without forfeiting much of his high reputa- 
tion for shrewdness and knowledge of the world, have presum- 
ed that his statements could not fail, at the least, greatly to 



66 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

moderate the popular idolatry of his opponent. Unless they 
regarded the series of allegations as a string of absolute fab- 
rications and falsehoods, and that too in spite of the evidence 
by which many of them would be substantiated, it it impossi- 
ble to understand how the public could resist the conviction, 
that this champion of liberty and justice was destitute of con- 
science and shame ; that he was selfish and ravenous to the 
last possible excess ; that he cared for no public interest but 
so far as he could turn it to his own advantage ; that in virtue 
of his acting the patriot he arrogantly demanded, of a party 
of public- spirited men who were associated for political ob- 
jects, to be supported, by subscriptions, in a sumptuous style 
of living, while his immense debts also were to be liquidated 
from the same source ; that he was indignant when any por- 
tion of the pecuniary liberality which had from the first been 
intended for more purposes than merely aids to him, was pro- 
posed to be applied to any one of those purposes, however ur- 
gent and important ; that he had thus become a burden and 
nuisance to his generous supporters, as intolerable as the ma- 
gician or demon that fixedhimself on the shoulders ofSinbad; 
that his capacity and fame for daring exploits did not preclude 
the meanness that could descend to the most paltry tricks ; 
that, in short, the sooner the public cause could be totally dis- 
severed from his interests and character, the better. To con- 
vince the people of the necessity of this separation, we can 
believe to have been really the leading object with Home in 
this ferocious controversy ; though his own vindication and 
revenge came in, of course, for a considerable share of his 
concern. 

Perhaps it is allowable to receive with some degree of 
scepticism Home's declarations that he had never lent his aid 
to the mock patriot from any personal partiality to him, but 
always exclusively on public grounds ; having, he says, very 
early in their acquaintance, been led to conceive " an infinite 
contempt for the very name of Mr. Wilkes." If, however, he 
did, almost from the first, estimate the man at his true worth, 
we know not how it is possible to excuse him for being con- 
tent, during so considerable a space of time, that the public 
cause should be identified with the character and interests of 
such a man. It is true that the man, however bad, had a just 
quarrel against the government ; the nation had also its just 
quarrel ; and the prosecution of both these quarrels coalesced 



JOHN IIORNE TOOKE. 67 

iiito one action. But it was of little consequence what became 
of so profligate and worthless a person : and one really should 
have been glad if the nation could have found any other possible 
means of asserting its rights, than by identifying those dignifi- 
ed and sacred objects, justice and liberty, with a compost of 
vices that proclaimed itself for their apostle and martyr. 
Doubtless it must be acknowledged that such a case would, to 
a man of public spirit, and at the same time refined and reli- 
gious conscience, present a choice of two evils. It is, on the 
one hand, a great evil for a nation to suffer, for a year or a 
month, an infringement of any one of its rights. It is a very 
great evil, on the other hand, that the most mom.entous national 
interests and political principles should, in order to their being 
defensively maintained, be suffered to be, as it were, person- 
ated by a character that will throw and fasten upon them all 
the associations of vice and dishonour, a character strongly 
tending to give the scrupulous and the virtuous a loathing of 
politics and almost a disaffection to the very name of liberty, 
and to supply the advocates of arbitrary and slavish principles 
with a topic, or rather a whole volume of topics, by which to 
give their children, their neighbours, and their countrymen, a 
degraded representation of the doctrines of liberty. — Either 
Home or Junius, we really forget which, somewhere says, 
that if the very devil himself could be supposed to put himself 
in the place of advocate and vindicator of some point of justice, 
he ought to be, so far, supported. We cannot agree to this, 
for the simple reason, that the just cause would ultimately suffer 
greater injury by the dishonour it would contract, in the gen- 
eral estimation of mankind, from the character of its vindica- 
tor, than probably it w^ould suffer from the wrong against 
which it would be vindicated. It must be a case of a most 
perilous urgency indeed if it will not be more politic to wait a 
while, and ransack the whole nation for an honest man to be 
put to the service, rather than employ an agent, whose quali- 
ties make even ourselves sometimes sick of the very business 
in the prosecution of which we support him. 

The power of an infamous character to defile and depreciate 
whatever is associated with it, was exemplified in the case of 
Home himself, in the permanent injury which his moral and 
political reputation sustained from his temporary connexion and 
co-operation with Wilkes. Whether he was aware of it or 
not, the fact was, that the suspicious and undervaluing esti- 



68 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

mate, we may say in plain terms the bad opinion, enter- 
tained of him throughout the sequel of his political life, by the 
more moral and cautious part of society, was in no small de- 
gree owing to this association. His declarations were per- 
haps accompanied by evidence enough to entitle them to credit, 
that his co-operation had been exclusively for public interests, 
and not a step beyond w hat he thought those interests demand- 
ed. He rendered some unquestionable services to public 
justice and popular rights. He gave uncommon proofs of dis- 
interestedness, at least of superiority to all the sordid kinds of 
self-interest. He was free from some of Wilkes's vices. But 
all this was unavailing. The stain was indelible. And the 
fatal mischief thus done to his character extended to his polit- 
ical doctrines : insomuch that they had the less chance of be- 
ing listened to with candour and respect, and of convincing in 
proportion to the force of argument, as they came from him ; — 
and others taught them with less success because he taught 
them too. 

There was, however, as we have already noticed, a short 
season of fermentation in the public mind, during which he 
suffered the most violent opprobrium, not for having co-operated 
with Wilkes, but for having renounced the connexion, clearly 
not with any desertion of principles or public objects, but for 
the very sake of those principles and objects. We do not 
wonder that we find him afterwards rating popular favour very 
low, and uniformly holding forth, that, if he had not stronger and 
better motives than any wish to obtain it, he should be a fool 
to undergo any more political toils, or expose himself to any 
more political dangers. To be sure one does think very 
meanly of whatever portion of the popular mind could be en- 
thusiastic for Wilkes after Home's plain statements of facts 
concerning him ; but the most scandalous thing of all was 
that Junius, whatever he might have a right to think of Home's 
integrity, should make light of the facts proving the utter 
want of it in Wilkes. If that mysterious personage had been 
universally accepted as the oracle of morality, we should, by 
this time, have been sunk even much deeper than we are, in 
that political corruption which raised so great a tempest of his 
indignation. He might perhaps have contrived to keep on some 
decent terms with morals, in attempting to maintain that the 
national politics were in such a crisis as to reduce the people 
to the alternative of supporting, to every length, a very bad 



JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 6^ 

man, or surrendering their own rights for ever, — had he, with- 
al, expressed the strongest reprobation of the man's profligacy, 
and deplored this wretched necessity of "rallying round" so 
worthless a principal. But instead of such a proceeding, we 
behold this austere censor flinging away with scorn a grave 
indictment which proved the incurable depravity and M'orth- 
lessness of the person in question, and railing at the equal 
folly and malice that could pretend to make the man's personal 
vices a disqualification for the office of champion of public jus- 
tice. 

The whole correspondence between Home and Junius is 
inserted, though it is to be found in every copy of Junius, that 
is, in the hands of almost every reading person in the country. 
This is a glaring specimen of book-making assurance. 

There is, we suppose, a general agreement of opinion with 
the biographer, that Home had decidedly the advantage in the 
substantial matters in dispute, that is, the merits of himself 
and Wilkes ; while as to Junius, there could not well be a 
stronger testimony to his powers, than to say that in the gene- 
ral force of writing he as decidedly appears the superior man. 
One or two of his retorts, particularly, are deadly and irre- 
sistible. 

About the time of Home's public quarrel with Wilkes, and 
in the interval between that and his combat with Junius, he 
was rendering considerable service in matters of national 
right and privilege ; first in resisting what, if quietly suffered, 
might soon have grown to a most iniquitous and star-chamber 
practice, the attempt to compel a man arraigned as a culprit 
to answer interrogatories tending to 'make him criminate him- 
self. This attempt was made by Lord Mansfield in the case 
of Bingley, a printer, who was prosecuted for a libel, and 
whom the evidence was not suflicient to convict. Home at 
once continued to excite the national attention to this alarm- 
ing innovation and its natural consequences, and confirmed, 
and procured to be ultimately rewarded, the courageous obsti- 
nacy of the printer in refusing to answer the interrogatories. 
The haughty judge had the mortification of discharging at 
last the man whom a considerable length of imprisonment 
had not in the smallest degree intimidated from defying him. 
Home was extremely and very justly zealous and anxious that 
this man should, for the sake of example, receive the most 
marked tokens of public favour. 
4* 



TO JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

His next effort was to maintain the right of the nation to be 
made acquainted with the proceedings of the legislature. By 
many of those who can never hear his name without some 
reproach of his factious spirit, it would nevertheless be deem- 
ed a great violation of public rights, if the debates in parlia- 
ment were to be suddenly forbidden, by authority, to be pub- 
lished. They are probably but little aware, how much the 
nation, in obtaining the practical concession of this as a 
right, is indebted to him. No such thing, except under some 
fictitious form, of little real use to the public, had been allowed 
before the period of his political activity. The House of 
Commons indignantly and pertinaciously resisted the attempts 
to assume it as a right : and though the prohibition must have 
been taken off some time, it was owing very much to his 
management and energy that it was effectually broken 
through about forty years since. It appears to have been, in 
a considerable measure, in consequence and in execution of a 
plan laid by him, that several spirited printers dared, nearly 
at the same time, to bring the question to issue by boldly 
publishing some of the debates : and in consequence of his in- 
fluence with the city magistrates, that these delinquents were 
enabled to brave or elude the utmost exertions of the House 
to punish them. And ever since, that liberty has been held 
by the people so much in the form and spirit of an absolute 
right, that there has been no material effort to take it from 
them. 

Mr. Stephens informs us that, at length, at the age of thirty- 
seven. Home "resigned his gown ;" which we can well be- 
lieve he had for a good while worn with sensations but little 
more enviable than those inflicted on Hercules by the Cen- 
taur's shirt. In throwing it off he assured and congratulated 
himself that he was escaping into an unlimited freedom, the 
first luxury of which would be to adopt, without any further 
interference, a profession congenial to his taste and ambition, 
and in which he had apparently very good reason to flatter 
himself he should attain the highest distinction and emolu- 
ment. The latter of these, indeed, was very far from being 
an object of eagerness in any part of his life ; but so many 
expenses incurred in prosecuting public objects, and in resist- 
ing or sustaining the effects of political and legal revenge, 
often gave him cause to feel the narrowness of his pecuniary 
resources. 



JOHN HORXE TOOKE. 71 

We have a somewhat entertaining account of his frugal do- 
mestic economy, while preparing himself for the bar, after the 
resignation of his vicarage of New Brentford — the highest 
ground in official rank, strictly so denominated, which was 
destined to be attained by one of the strongest and most am- 
bitious spirits of the age, whose juvenile and inferior associates 
were seen scaling, and taking a firm position on the heights 
of ecclesiastical and legal dignities and wealth. In this state 
of seclusion and severe study he was, nevertheless, always 
ready at a moment's warning, to spring like a royal tiger from 
his thicket, on the agents and abettors of any public delin- 
quency. Mr. Tooke, a moderate wealthy political friend, 
whose name he was afterwards authorized to assume, sought 
his advice in a case that appeared desperate. In consequence 
of purchasing an estate called Purley, (from which Home's 
great philological work took its title) he had been involved in 
a vexatious litigation about manorial rights with a neighbour- 
ing gentleman of great influence, who had betaken himself at 
last to the decisive expedient of an act of parliament. The 
bill which was in progress was highly unjust ; but through 
some such fatality, as would never have happened before or 
since in such a place, it .was going forward with the most per- 
fect success, in contempt of every effort made to place the mat- 
ter in its true light ; and appeared certain of the final sanction 
of the House of Commons on the third reading — appointed 
for the very next day to that in which the case was despond- 
ingly stated to Home. His answer was, " If the facts be 
as you represent them, the House shall not pass that bill." 
He immediately suggested an expedient which would per- 
haps have occurred to no other man in England, and took on 
himself the execution at a hazard which very few would have 
been willing, for the sake of either friendship or public justice, 
to share. He immediately wrote, in language the most point- 
edly offensive, an attack on the Speaker of the House of Com- 
mons, the noted Sir Fletcher Norton, with reference to the bill 
in question ; and obtained its insertion in the newspaper, ren- 
dered so popular by the letters of Junius, on the condition, of 
course, that the printer, when summoned to account, should 
produce the author. The object of this proceeding was, to 
compel the House to a much more full and formal attention to 
the subject of the bill, than it had previously been induced to 
give ; and at the same time, as an equally necessary thing, to 



72 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

give its virtue the benefit of having the censorial attention of 
the public strongly fixed on its conduct. He was confident 
that by doing this he should frustrate the parliamentary mea- 
sure, and then, for the consequences to himself, he had courage 
enough to take his chance. The next day a great sensation 
was manifest in what might be called the political public ; and, 
as he had foreseen, the attention of a full House was called, in 
precedence to all other business, to the flagrant outrage on its 
dignity — a dignity so vulnerable by a plain charge of miscon- 
duct, though it had not been injured in the least by the mis- 
conduct itself. After a fine display of generous indignation, a 
summons was sent for the instant appearance of the printer. 
He obeyed, and, as he had been directed, immediately gave 
up the name of the criminal in chief, who had taken care to be 
already in the House, prepared to confront, probably with 
very little trepidation, the whole anger of the august assembly, 
A momentary silence of surprise and confusion followed the 
announcement of his name, which was come to be almost 
synonymous with that expression of recognizance, "the ene- 
my." On being called forth, he disavowed all disrespect to 
the Speaker whom he had libelled, calmly explained the mo- 
tives of the proceeding, and then made such a luminous state- 
ment of the case of his friend, that the schemers and advocates of 
the injustice were baffled, the obnoxious parts of the bill were 
immediately thrown out, and, several resolutions were moved 
and carried " to prevent all such precipitate proceedings for 
the future." There is no punishing conquerors, however of- 
fensive may have been their conduct. After a very slight for- 
mality of detention in custody, he was set at liberty, on some 
pretended inconclusiveness of proof against him. 

The next thing that brought him out again conspicuously 
before the public, was an advertisement in the newspapers, 
signed with his name, proposing a subscription for the families 
of the Americans who were slain at Lexington, a fact which 
he pronounced, in the most explicit language possible, (and 
which he repeated in a second publication,) a murder commit- 
ted by the king's troops. He wished and hoped by some such 
act of daring and notoriety, to rouse the attention of the na- 
tion to the infatuated proceedings of the government with re- 
spect to the American colonies. For a good while no vindic- 
tive notice was taken of this wicked libel, as it was found to 
be when the minister was become stronger in the parliament. 



JOHN HOENE TOOKE. 73 

In the second year after its publication, the writer suddenly 
and unexpectedly found himself within the iron grasp of the 
attorney-general, Thurlow, with his information ex-officio, and 
had another opportunity of evincing his courage and resources 
in a trial before Lord Mansfield, and a personal contest with 
him. The speeches in defence are given, and characters of 
the judge and attorney-general. 

There could be no manner of uncertainty as to the result of 
such a prosecution against Home. Though he was, it seems, 
the only man in the country that incurred any punishment on 
account of opinions avowed against the American war, he 
could not in the least wonder that in his case they were to be 
expiated by a fine and twelve months residence in the King's 
Bench prison. He might however, notwithstanding all he 
had seen of the management of public concerns, feel some de- 
gree of surprise, as we suppose most of the readers of the de- 
scription will, at the benevolent care which had been taken 
that the imprisonment should not involve a complication of 
evils unknown to the laws, and beyond the purposes of justice. 

*' Conversant as he was in the ordinary transactions of human life, his 
surprise cannot be supposed trifling', when, after being consigned to this 
jail, by the special command of the Chief Justice of England, he had still 
a habitation to seek ; for, after stopping a few minutes in the lodge, he 
was conducted to a vacant space within the walls, and there left, in 
utter ignorance of his future fate, and an entire stranger to all around 
him ! It may be supposed, perhaps, by the sons and daughters of afflu- 
ence, who reside in splendid apartments, and repose every night on beds 
of down, that even for the most wretched prisoner there is due provision 
in respect to a decent lodging ; where poverty, sorrow, or misfortunes 
may be secluded from the gaze of mankind, and find an asylum at least, 
if comfort be denied them. But this would prove a grand mistake, for 
the captives being generally more numerous than the apartments, it is by 
seniority alone that the unhappy inmates succeed to the occupancy of a 
small bed-chamber, totally devoid of any furniture or conveniency what- 
ever. All this, as Mr. Home solemnly assured me, he learned, for the first 
time, on the parade, whither he proceeded in charge of two tipstaves, who 
took their leave without condescending to give him any information what- 
ever. On his distress being made known to the spectators, a person, who 
proved to be a Jew, offered, for a sum of money, to accommodate him imme- 
dately. Ten guineas were accordingly depo&ited in his hands ; but it was 
speedily discovered that this son of Israel had not any apartment at his 
command, being only the joint-tenant of a miserable little room, in com- 
mon with four or five other debtors. To the honour of the prisoners, how- 
ever, they immediately interposed, and obliged him to restore the money 
to the stranger, who, being charmed with their love of justice, and deter- 
mined not to be outdone by them in point of generosity, divided the sura 



74 JOHN HORXE TOOKE. 

in question among the poorer sort of the inhabitants. The clerk of the 
papers, on learning this anecdote, immediately made his appearance, and 
offered, for five hundred pounds, beforehand, to accommodate him with 
a small house, situate within the rules, during the whole period of his con. 
finement; but as the payment of a weekly sum was preferred, the nego- 
ciation was instantly concluded on that basis." 

He sustained very material injury, both in his property and 
his health, from this imprisonment ; but the most vexatious 
circumstance of his whole life was to be encountered soon 
after his restoration to liberty. He had kept the number of 
terms requisite as a qualification for being called to the bar, 
and proceeded to make application for this formality of admit- 
tance, without, it seems, the slightest suspicion that an insu- 
perable obstacle was to rise up suddenly, as if from the ground, 
at his approach. The first and a second application were re- 
sisted by a majority of the benchers of the Inner Temple, and 
w4th such circumstances as to convince him that any further 
prosecution of the object would be vain. " This refusal," 
says the biographer, " was a cruel and severe blow. Indeed 
it was struck at a vital part ; and, I am persuaded, contributed 
not a little to sour and embitter the remaining portion of his 
life." The repulse is attributed in part to the "mean jealousy 
of some practising-lawyers, who were afraid of being eclipsed 
by a new competitor." 

Some other reason, however, for the rejection, was to be 
pretended ; and the only thing that even lawyers could found 
an exception upon, was the circumstance of his having been 
a clergyman. 

Thus rejecting one profession — rejected by another — in- 
jured in his small fortune — but elate with the proudest con- 
sciousness of talent, he was to commit himself under inauspi- 
cious omens, for the remainder of his life, a very protracted 
remainder, as it proved, to the course of events and chances 
in a turbulent and changing state of the times. He was, how- 
ever, certain that no man could have greater promptitude and 
courage in seizing events, and he might be acquitted of any 
great excess of vanity if he even flattered himself he could 
sometimes create them. No disappointments, nor the com- 
paratively humble rank in society in which he was condemned 
to continue, could, in the smallest degree, repress the tone 
in which he had assumed to be the censor of the conduct of 
the uppermost people in the state, whether taken as individu- 
als, or in the imposing pomp of ofiicial or legislative combina- 



JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 75 

tion. Probably no man ever did, on the strength of what he 
possessed in his mere person, and in the destitution of all ad- 
vantages of birth, wealth, station, or connexions, maintain, 
with such perfect and easy uniformity, so challenging and 
peremptory a manner towards great and pretending folks of 
all sorts. This arose from the consciousness that at all times 
he dared to tight any of them, on any subject, at a moment's 
warning, in writing, in personal dispute, in courts of law, or 
even, we fear, in that zz/dawful mode which it is the disgrace 
of this nation to tolerate. 

In 1780 he wrote, in conjunction with Dr. Price, a tract 
against the American war, which is here represented as hav- 
ing contributed materially to its termination, by hastening the 
downfall of the wretched statesmen who were carrying it on. 
When the nation was restored to peace, he seems to have 
felt an unusual desire to taste it himself. He purchased a 
small estate near Huntingdon, and applied himself zealously 
to the study and practice of agriculture, to which he had long 
had a partiality, as what he regarded as " an useful and liberal 
science." 

A violent ague compelled him to a speedy retreat from the 
reclaiming of marshes, and threw him back on the great town, 
where he recovered his health, took a house, and fairly closed 
with his destiny to be for life a wit, scholar, philosopher, and 
politician, without affluence, or power, or any effectual favour 
of those who possessed them. 

He soon entered with great ardour into the cause of parlia- 
mentary reform ; by coming forward as the champion of which, 
in 1782, William Pitt attained little less than the highest pitch 
of his father's popularit^^ Home published a curious and in- 
genious scheme of a reformed representation and mode of 
election, of which an outline is here exhibited. But he Avas 
so really intent on the substantial object, that he made no 
difficulty of dismissing any peculiarity of his own speculations 
and projects, and coalescing in the apparently more practica- 
ble ones of Mr. Pitt — " ingenuously preferring," says Mr. 
Stephens, "that gentleman's plan to his own." 

He became an intimate, earnest, indefatigable co-operator 
with this youth of promise, in the preparation of the plans and 
means of purifying the legislature ; and entertained the high- 
est respect for his political integrity so late, at least, as 1788, 
in which year he published, under the title of " Two Pair of 



76 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

Portraits," an extended and very pointed contrast between 
Pitt and Fox, greatly to the disadvantage and depreciation of 
the latter, who was never forgiven by Home for that decided 
hostility to popular interests with which he had begun his po- 
litical career, and his subsequent coalition with Lord North. 
"While others objected to the inexperience of Mr. Pitt," says 
our author, " Home referred to his talents, his candour, his 
ingenuousness, and augured the happiest results from his 
labours. He never, it is asserted, carried his principles of 
political reform beyond those avowed by that statesman, and 
constantly opposed the doctrines of annual parliaments and 
universal suftrage,* which were maintained by some of the 
zealous advocates of the cause, and which, Mr. Stephens says, 
contributed to defeat that cause by exciting an excessive 
alarm in the aristocratical part of the nation. It appears that 
the subject of these memoirs was for some time, notwithstand- 
ing all his knowledge of men and politicians, very sanguine 
in his confidence of its substantial success. It sunk into lan- 
guor, however, even before the paragon of political virtue 
ascended into the better light which shines on the high places 
of the state. How it fared then, and ever since, nobody needs 
to be told. 

"The Diversions of Purley," a book of very moderate size 
at its first appearance, was published in 1786. We have 
in the memoirs a whole needless chapter, in the form of an 
unsatisfactory analysis, instead of a brief general explanation 
in two or three lucid pages, of the object of the book, and of 
that peculiarity of its theory in which its acknowledged origi- 
nality consisted. 

In the following year he resumed his pen on a subject which 
made a great noise in its day, though now gone to its place 
among forgotten trifles. He vindicated, on the ground of law 
and general propriety, the reported marriage of the Prince of 
Wales with Mrs. Fitzherbert, assuming the fact of the mar- 
riage as undeniable. His next production was the " Por- 
traits," already noticed, which concluded with these two ques- 
tions : 

First question. Which two of them will you choose to hang up in 
your cabinets, the Pitts or the Foxes ? 

* At a somewhat later period it is said that he •* hesitated as to the pro- 
priety of annual parliaments." 



JOHN HOENE TOOKE. 77 

Second question. Where, on your conscience, should the other two 
be hanged ?" 

The author remarks what a prodigious alteration there 
would have been in at least one of the delineations, if the artist 
had brought the subjects again under his pencil a few years 
afterwards. 

The celebrated trial of Mr. Hastings is mentioned as, with- 
in the whole extent of Home's active life, the only great na- 
tional concern in which he was content to be neutral ; and 
even in that he strongly censured the mode of proceeding, — - 
the multitude of the charges, the long speeches, the appeals to 
the passions, and the ruinous protraction. He thought if guilt 
existed it might be ascertained by a very short inquiry ; and 
in that case he was " for punishing the receiver, and restoring 
the stolen property to the right owners." This might be very 
excellent doctrine : and therefore it was for owners de facto 
to beware of even permitting, much more of hastening, any 
decisive proof of the guilt. 

A pleasing circumstance is related of his being applied to 
for advice relative to an Englishman taken by a corsair and 
detained in slavery at Algiers, but liberated in consequence of 
Home's benevolent exertions. This very circumstance was 
the cause of his being brought into a certain degree of con- 
nexion with the famous and obnoxious London Corresponding 
Society, of which the biographer relates the very humble ori- 
gin and the early history. 

He made a distinguished figure in the year 1790, by con- 
testing, with Mr. Fox and Lord Hood, the election for West- 
minster, with the greatest ability, and with no small measure 
of popularity, which he augmented by turning to the utmost 
account the refusal of his eminent antagonist to give a pledge 
for parliamentary reform. His failure, however, was a matter 
of course, and which he foresaw from the first ; but he made 
it contribute even more than success would have done to his 
fame, by means of that memorable petition to the House of 
Commons, which contained certain bold and contemptuous 
expressions of crimination that have ever since been employed 
as the most pointed common-places in the censures of its cor- 
rupt constitution. The petition was read to the assembly, and 
received with as much displeasure as it is becoming and dig- 
nified for conscious and lofty integrity to manifest, under 
calumnies which it can calmly defy. The petition was readi- 



78 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

ly voted "frivolous and vexatious ;" but it is perhaps to be re- 
gretted, nevertheless, that it could not comport with the in- 
sulted dignity of the House to vouchsafe, in a very few words, 
such a notice and specific falsification of the following passage, 
as to prevent its being so often triumphantly repeated by the 
factious and the wicked. 

" The said scrutiny was, by the direction or approbation of the House 
of Commons, rehnquished, without effect, after having lasted ten months, 
and with an expense to Sir Cecil Wray of many thousand pounds more 
than appears by some late proceedings in Chancery to be the allowed 

average price of a perpetual seat in the House of — , where seats for 

legislators are as notoriously bought and sold as stalls and standing for 
cattle at a fair." Vol. i. p. 94. 

The expense occasioned to the other candidates by this 
petition brought on Home an action for debt, in which Mr. 
Fox was successful, notwithstanding the singularly able and 
animated exertions of the defendant, who could not fail to take 
full advantage of such an opportunity of throwing out a number 
of bold and important observations on the rights of juries, and 
on the flagrant corruptions in the representation, particularly 
of Westminster. 

In 1792, he became impatient of the pure breezes and ex- 
hilarating odours of the metropolis, and removed his residence 
to the village where he continued all the remainder of his life. 

It is not, to be sure, a very lengthened apology, and depre- 
cation of loyal and aristocratical anger, that the biographer is 
disposed to make for the animated interest taken by Mr. Home 
Tooke* in this prodigious event (the French Revolution) ; but 
even still fewer words might have sufficed. Previously to it 
the unanimous voice of Englishmen, in notes alternately of 
scorn and commiseration, had pronounced the French people 
a nation of slaves ; and nothing on earth could be more palpa- 
ble, than that the slaves of a government have no chance for 
freedom but through the energy and assertion of their own 
will. When such a grand national assertion was successfully 
taking place, to have been otherwise than gratified in behold- 
ing it, would have betrayed, in any pretended friend of liber- 
ty, a meanly-constituted mind — unless he were a prophet ; 
and we have no faith in any man's intelligence having been, 

* He had assumed this additional surname in 1782, at the request of 
the gentleman of that name whose heir he was now understood to be. 



JOHN HOENE TOOKE. 79 

at the commencement of that rerokition, so prophetic of the 
sequel as to justify him in refusing, on the whole, his congra- 
tulations. Doubtless a man \Yho could form no judgment on 
such a subject without the intermingling and influence of re- 
ligious ideas, and the most refined order of moral principles, 
would have had, on this great occasion, some perceptions and 
fears to which our ex-clergyman was a stranger. Such a 
man might at some moments have feared it was too much to 
hope, that so depraved and irreligious a people should sudden- 
ly receive an immense and unmixed favour from the Divine 
Governor. He might have surmised with alarm some possi- 
ble consequences of the sudden breaking loose of millions of 
ignorant papists and oppressed indignant semi-barbarians, in- 
cited, directed, represented, by thousands or myriads of infi- 
dels. His exultation, therefore, would have been greatly 
modified ; but still the appearances were such as to justify a 
preponderance, for a season, of the hopeful and complacent 
feelings, in a mind confident that a grand melioration of the 
human condition, in these latter ages, is among the appoint- 
ments of the Divine Goodness. 

Though it is probable Home entertained, notwithstanding 
any unfavorable omens from the quarter of religion and reli- 
gious morality, an almost unmixed confidence in the happy re- 
sults of this portentous movement in the civilized world, it 
uniformly appears that he had no wish for the revolutionary 
part of its agitations to be extended to this country. Amid all 
his zeal for reforms he had invariably, and we believe sincere- 
ly, declared for our old constitution ; and that not under any 
illusory shape of approving certain abstract principles, sup- 
posed to be embodied in that constitution, and yet capable of 
taking a very different practical form ; but with the most ex- 
plicit approbation of an effective royalty and aristocracy. He 
was even solicitous that the approving good wishes, and the 
congratulations, conveyed to the French revolutionists fi'om 
the friends of liberty in this country, should not go unaccom- 
panied with some expressions of satisfaction with our own 
political system. When, in a meeting convoked to celebrate 
the event, Mr. Sheridan moved a resolution, 

" Highly complimentary to the French revolution, Home expressed a 
strong desire that some qualifying expression might be added to this gene- 
ral motion of approbation, and insisted 'that the English nation had only 
to maintain and improve the constitution which their ancestors have trans- 



80 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

mitted to them.' This position, although at first opposed, with tumult 
and vehemence, in consequence of his arguments and perseverence, was 
at length carried unanimously, — in the following form : ' We feel equal 
satisfaction that the subjects of England, by the virtuous exertions of their 
ancestors, have not so arduous a task to perform as the French had, ' but 
have only to maintain and improve the consttution which their forefathers 
have transmitted to them.' " 

It would be possible for captiousness to go the length of 
affecting to discover in all this an artful contrivance for be- 
guiling away loyal suspicion and vigilance from his deep-laid 
and pernicious designs. But we believe every one of the few 
candid and impartial readers of his life will be fully convinced, 
that this abhorred and pestiferous anarchist held most firmly 
the principles of a constitutional patriot, and never formed any 
projects inconsistent with that character. 

As much candour, at the least, as this would require, is dis- 
played on the other side by our author, when, in approaching 
the memorable period in Home Tooke's life in which he him- 
self anticipated a speedy surrender of that life on the gallows, 
the following admission is made in favour of the main mover 
of the famous prosecutions for treason in 1794. 

*' It is not to be supposed that Mr. Pitt, whose father had been the 
original author, and himself the prime mover, of a parliamentary reform, 
would have been so lost to all sense of shame, as to attempt to commit a 
legal murder on those who had followed his own example, and merely 
persevered in those plans which he himself had broached, matured, and 
abandoned! The minister never conceived the idea of a public prosecu- 
tion, until he was firmly persuaded that a treasonable plot existed for the 
overthrow of the state, and that, under a popular pretext, a revolution was 
actually meditated, on the same principles, and with the same designs, as 
had been so recently effected in France." 

Mr. Stephens gives a very curious account of a proceeding 
of Home Tooke's at this period of loyal alarm and almost 
frenzy ; a proceeding which formed, certainly, a most capital 
joke, but which, just at that crisis, involved some possibilities 
of mischief which would have been a greater price than even 
so excellent a joke was worth. The ministry employed and 
entertained a multitude of " reporters," — a genteel denomina- 
tion for spies ; and a proportion of these were persons not of 
the meanest class, in the ordinary sense of that description. 

" Some of these were actuated by zeal ; while others, who would have 
spurned the idea of pecuniary gratifications, were influenced solely by the 
hopes of offices and appomtments. One of the latter had for some time 



JOHN HORXE TOOKE. 81 

attached himself to Mr. Tooke, and was a frequent visitor at Wimbledon. 
His station and character were calculated to shield him from suspicion, 
but his host, who was too acute to be easily duped, soon saw through ihe 
flimsy veil of his pretended discontent. As he had many personal friends, 
in various departments of government, he soon discovered the views, con. 
nexions, and pursuits of his guest ; but, instead of upbraiding him with his 
treachery, and dismissing him with contempt, as most other men in his 
situation would have done, he determined to foil him, if possible, at his 
own weapons." — " He accordingly pretended to admit the spy into his en- 
tire confidence, and completed the delusion, by actually rendering the 
person who wished to circumvent him, in his turn, a dupe. Mr. Tooke 
began by dropping remote hints relative to the strength and zeal of the 
popular party, taking care to magnify their numbers, praise their unanimi- 
ty, and commend their resolution. By degrees he descended to particu- 
lars, and at length communicated confidentially, and under the most 
solemn promises of secrecy, the alarming intelligence that some of the 
guards were gained ; that an armed force was organized ; and that the 
nation was actually on the eve of a revolution. After a number of inter- 
views, he at length affected to own, that he himself was at the head of 
the conspiracy, and boasted like Pompey of old ' that he could laise le- 
gions merely by stamping on the ground with his foot.'" 

All this the miserable dupe, whose name M^e presume Mr. 
Stephens could have given, eagerly reported to his shrewd 
patrons, who could estimate so correctly the faculties of the 
two men, and were doubtless, among their other cares, begin- 
ning to consider which of the sinecures Mas likely to fall, or 
what new office they could invent, to reward so honourable a 
patriot. 

What was a joke at Wimbledon was a serious and awful 
thing at Whitehall. The gull's stories came in thicker and 
darker. Other ominous signs were reported by other expect- 
ants of places, or earners of fees. A trivial note, containing 
the query, "Is it possible to get ready by Thursday 1" was in- 
tercepted on its way to Catiline. The accidental scrawl of a 
child becomes portentous if an assembly of conjurers is 
convened to decipher it ; the alarm grew to terror ; and a 
few days afterwards the house of a friend where Home was 
sitting at dinner was invested by a section of the British army, 
and he was carried to the Tower. After several months of 
confinement, with all the rigour compatible with the absolute 
demands of ill health, he was transferred to Newgate and the 
Old Bailey, to act a more conspicuous part than even in any 
former period of his life. During his imprisonment he did not 
know what was to form the matter of the charges against 
him, or what would be the mode of proceeding ; but was per- 



82 JOHN HORNE TOOKE, 

suaded that his destruction was determined on, and that 
means would not fail to be found or made to effect it with a 
semblance of legality. He was prepared therefore, as he 
said, to enter the court with the spirit of a tiger ; to throw off 
all restraint, and to fight the administrators of law and their 
superiors in the manner of a man who has but once to fight, 
and is resolved to signalize his fall by an exemplary and de- 
served vengeance on his persecutors. As a commencement 
of this last of his labours, he composed, in the interval between 
the charge, by Lord Chief Justice Eyre, to the grand jury and 
his arraignment at the bar, a speech to be addressed to the 
court. Of this speech " a correct copy," says Mr. Stephens, 
"is here inserted from the only document now in existence." 
This very extraordinary composition is a most daring and 
almost savage assault, with the charge of political and legal 
iniquity, on the Lord Chief Justice " and those by whom he 
was employed." The most deliberate and unfeigned defiance 
sustains the writer through every part of it. 

It was his intention to have inserted a copy of this speech in 
each of the London newspapers ; previously, we suppose our 
author means, to the trial ; but on due reflection he was in- 
duced to forbear so flagrant a provocation ; it may well be 
believed that his spirit did not at any moment sink below the 
pitch of intrepid defiance ; but it would have been a wanton 
display of bravery to aggravate unnecessarily every prejudice 
and danger he had to confront ; and it even might occur to 
him, that such an eager commencement might seem to betray 
something like a defect of confidence in himself to retain the 
full command of his powers of oflence through every part of 
the subsequent proceeding, and at its expected fatal termina- 
tion. He slightly moderated down his spirit to the convenient 
temper for action. It was but an inconsiderable reduction, 
however, and his first interlocutions in the court were quite in 
the tone of a man ready for battle. But early in the proceed- 
ings his highly-stimulated and completely-armed hostility was 
somewhat mitigated by the complaisance and respectful atten- 
tion shown him by the court ; in their progress it was almost 
beguiled away into wit and good humour ; and at the conclu- 
sion he expressed himself in the strongest terms of grateful 
acknowledgment to the court, to his defenders, and to the jury. 
The pacific feeling was very much promoted by his gratifica- 
tion in perceiving with what a predominating vigour and de- 



JOHN HOENE TOOKE. 88 

cided success his cause was advancing, under his own exer- 
tions and those of his advocates. It was so bland a mood that 
even Mr. Pitt, though he did not, our author says, escape 
through the "fiery ordeal" quite " unscorched," was treated 
with comparative lenity. 

"After his" (Pitt's) "examination, it was observed by Mr. Tooke's 
nephew, on their return from the court, ' that he had got Pitt down, and 
might have done more with him.' ' Yes, I might, John,' was the reply, 
' but never in my Ufe did I choose to trample on a fallen foe.' " 

We are not called to make any remark on those celebrated 
state prosecutions, in which a haughty, arbitrary, and vindic- 
tive administration were so notoriously deceived in their calcu- 
lation and baffled in their design : — a defeat, however, which 
they took care to repay to the country and its liberties by a 
pernicious innovation on the fundamental laws relative to po- 
litical crimes. 

As to Home Tooke, who was important and obnoxious 
enough to be, on a subsequent occasion, legislated against as 
an individual, nothing could be more complete than the tri- 
umph he obtained in this prosecution over all the calumniators 
who had charged him with anarchical principles. But, though 
gratified by this opportunity of taking his right ground, in sight 
of the nation, and pleased, in one view, to tind that the admin- 
istration of the law retained so much justice even toward men 
suspected and detested by the ruling powers, it appears, nev- 
ertheless, by the testimony of his biographer, and is sufficient- 
ly probable from the character of the man, that his satisfaction 
was not unmingled with an opposite sentiment with which 
very few persons will sympathize. Mr. Stephens says, 

" I was assured by him, more than once, ' that he had been ever anxious 
to offer his life up as a sacrifice to his opinions;' and he appeared to me, 
toward the close of his existence, to be disappointed at the event, wishing 
rather to fall gloriously in what he considered to be the cause of the pub. 
lie, than perisla ignominiously by the lapse of time or the pressure of dis- 
ease." — Vol. ii. p. 53. 

We cannot follow out the narrative of his life, which was 
perhaps somewhat less eventful, though the account of it is 
still more interesting, in what may be called its last though 
very protracted stage, from about the age of sixty to that of 
seventy-seven. Its most marked events were, another most 
vigorous contest for the representation of Westminster, ren- 



84 JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 

dered famous in the records of political warfare by his humor- 
ous and most biting comments on the phrase " domestic ene- 
mies," employed by his opponent Sir Alan Gardner, — and his 
short occupation of a seat in the House of Commons for Old 
Sarum, an honour from the re-possession of which he was pre- 
cluded, as is well known, by all the warlike formality of an 
act of parliament, which was levelled solely at him though it 
did not mention his name. During the short period of his 
privilege he was distinguished by the moderation, as much as 
by the good sense, of his speeches. And indeed, though in his 
addresses to the people at the Westminster election, and in 
the printed address in which, after being debarred any further 
admittance into the sanctuary at St. Stephen's, he seemed to 
fling that high honour with bitter scorn in the teeth of those 
who had decreed him incapable of it, there appears not the 
smallest diminution of the accustomed invective boldness, our 
author affirms that his trial had the effect of permanently modi- 
fying his language. 

The latter half of the second volume is a very entertaining 
miscellany. There is a rather long series of brief notices of 
distinguished men, of various ranks, accomplishments, and 
professions, who held an acquaintance, more or less intimate, 
with Mr. Home Tooke. It contains some curious anecdotes : 
but none, perhaps, more curious than the ugly one of Professor 
Porson's threatening, at Tooke's own table, to "A:icA; him and 
cnff him," and Tooke's insisting on their fighting out their 
quarrel in a "couple of quarts" of brandy^ a kind of duel suffi- 
ciently to the Professor's taste, but which soon laid him sense- 
less on the floor. 

" On which the victor at this new species of Olympic game, taking 
hold of his antagonist's hmbs in succession, exclaimed, ' This is the foot 
that was to have kicked, and the hand that was to have cuffed me !' and 
then drinking one glass more, to the speedy recovery of his prostrate ad- 
vesary, ordered, ' that great care should be taken of Mr. Professor Por- 
son ;' after which he withdrew to the adjacent apartment, in which tea 
and coffee had been prepared, with the same seeming calmness as if 
nothmg had occurred." 

A number of the particulars in the philosopher's domestic 
arrangements are strongly illustrative of what was peculiar in 
his character, while the details concerning the painful diseases 
which oppressed him severely during many of his latter years, 
give the highest possible idea of that most extraordinary 



JOHX HORNE TOOKE. 85 

strength of mind which would maintain in spite of them an ani- 
mated and generally cheerful temper. 

Home Tooke was unquestionably one of the half dozen 
best talkers of his age ; but Mr. Stephens was a very inferior 
Boswell ; though he has given a few tolerably good things 
from the notes which he says he was several years in the 
habit of making of conversations in which he heard Home 
Tooke display himself. It is not so much, however, the smart 
or fine sayings that he seems to have recorded, as his grave 
opinions on questions, books, and men. Judgments are pro- 
nounced on several distinguished writers of this and other 
countries ; brief notices are recorded of discussions or dictates 
on points of literature, politics, law, history, agriculture, and 
a still wider extent of subjects, on which it would have been 
highly interesting and improving to hear this powerflil thinker 
exert his acuteness and display his knowledge. A number of 
these fragments and relics retain a measure of the luminous 
appearance which we can well believe to have been very 
striking in the complete original exhibition. 

If in conversation Home was oftener allowed to dictate than 
compelled to argue, it was not his fault, as no man ever more 
promptly welcomed a challenge to debate ; and the more pow- 
erful his opponent, the more he was gratified. He had a con- 
stitutional courage hardly ever surpassed, a perfect command 
of his temper, all the warlike furniture and efficiency of prompt 
and extreme acuteness, satiric wit in all its kinds and degrees, 
from gay banter to the most deadly mordacity, and all this sus- 
tained by inexhaustible knowledge, and indelinitely reinforced, 
as his life advanced, by victorious exertion in many trying sit- 
uations. Such a man would be made a despot whether he 
would or not, by the obsequiousness of those who were either 
by choice or necessity placed in his immediate sphere ; and it 
would depend on his temper whether he would be a tyrant. 

He had a manner, it seems — a Sultanic look — which could 
instantly impose the silence of death if he willed any matter of 
inquiry to be made an end of. There is one instance of this 
which appears somewhat mysterious and somewhat foolish. 
The conversation had been about Junius. He had laughed at 
some of the claims to the honour of being that personage : 

" One of the company now asked if he knew the author. On the ques- 
tion being put, he immediately crossed his knife and fork on his plate, and 
5 



86 JOHN HORNE TOOKIT. 

assuming a stem look, replied 'I do !' His manner, tone, and attitcide 
were all too formidable to admit of any further interrogatories," 

We are at a loss to conceive what there could be in the 
question to bring up all this majesty, and it seems rather a 
pitiable pusillanimity that durst not say one word to maintain 
the innocence of asking it, and even following it up with a 
second. 

Mr. Stephens allows that, notwithstanding his hero's zeal- 
ous habitual love of truth, he would sometimes, in disregard of 
it, fight for mere victory ; a very superfluous expense of am* 
munition, it may be thought, to give it no worse character, in a 
man whose actual belief and unbelief included so many things 
to be maintained in hostility to prevailing opinions. A worse 
thing, however, than the folly of the practice was its immo- 
rality ; and yet it is this, we presume, that the biographer 
means to extenuate by adding, as if it were an unquestionable 
proposition, this most thoughtless solecism, — "the ablest and 
BEST of men frequently fight, like gladiators, for fame, without 
troubling themselves much as to the justice of the cause." 

It would be but impertinent, however, to affect to call such 
a character as that of John Home Tooke to account for this 
or the other particular culpaliility. It would be something 
like attending to criticize the transactions of a Pagan temple, 
and excepting to one rite as ungraceful, perhaps, and to another 
practice as irreverent ; like as if the suhsiance of the service 
were of a quality to deserve that its particular parts should be 
corrected. His whole moral constitution was unsound, from the 
exclusion, as far as can be judged from this work, or as there are 
any other means of judging, of all respect to a future account, 
to be given to the Supreme Governor. Towards the conclu- 
sion of his life, he made calm and frequent references to his 
death, but not a word is here recorded expressive of anticipa- 
tions beyond it. The unavoidable inference from the whole 
of these melancholy memorials is, that he reckoned on the 
impunity of eternal sleep. Not, however, that he was willing 
to acknowledge any obligations to that protective economy; 
for he is known to have insisted, in a tone of the utmost con- 
fidence, in a very serious conversation not very long before 
his death, that if there should be a future life and retribution, 
he, of all men, had no reason to be afraid of it, for that he had 
even greater merit than could be required for his acquittal 
before a just Judge. The grand rule of moral excellence, even 



JOHN HORNE TOOKE. 87 

according to the gospel, he observed, was, to do to others as 
we would they should do to us ; but he had gone much beyond 
this. 

From Mr. Stephens's record it would not appear that he 
would very often formally and gravely talk on religion, though 
he would advert to it in the incidental way of satire and swear- 
ing. One particular conversation is alluded to in which his 
opinions were more disclosed than on any other remembered 
occasion. But with the nature of these avowed opinions the 
readers were not to be entrusted, further than some trifling 
hints, by implication, that he was not a polytheist ! — In one 
conversation, not long before his death, he enlarged on the di- 
vine goodness, as manifest in the constitution of the world, and 
as having been amply experienced by himself. He maintain- 
ed a wonderful serenity, a very signally philosophic tone, 
amidst his complicated and often oppressive bodily sufferings. 
At one time, however, it appears he consented to live only in 
compliance with the entreaties of his friends, having, as it 
seems, determined to withdraw himself from the burden by 
declining all sustenance. 

He advanced to the close of his life with a self-complacent 
mixture of pride and gayety. A thoughtful religious reader 
will accompany him with a sentiment of deep melancholy, to 
behold so keen, and strong, and perverted a spirit, triumphant 
in its own delusions, fearlessly passing into the unknown 
world. 

In closing this article, and wishing we knew how to apolo- 
gize for its unpardonable prolixity, we are bound to repeat 
that, as a political man, we think it evident that Home has ex- 
perienced the utmost degree of injustice ; that his speculations 
and projects were moderate, that they uniformly aimed at the 
public good, that they were maintained with a consistency 
which put most of his distinguished contemporaries to shame, 
and that this very same inflexible consistency was a principal 
cause of the opprobrium with which time-serving politicians 
loaded him, in their own defence. 



88 



III. 

COLERIDGE'S FRIEND 



The Friend; a Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper, 
excluding personal and party politics, and the events of the 
day. Conducted by S. T. Coleridge. 

It was with no small pleasure we saw any thing announced 
of the nature of a proof or pledge that the author of this paper 
was in good faith employing himself, or about to employ him- 
self, in the intellectual public service. His contributions to 
that service have, hitherto, borne but a small proportion to the 
reputation he has long enjoyed of being qualified for it in an 
extraordinary degree. This reputation is less founded on a small 
volume of juvenile poems, and some occasional essays in peri- 
odical publications, than on the estimate formed and avowed 
by all the intelligent persons that have ever had the gratifica- 
tion of falling into his society. 

After his return, several years since, from a residence of 
considerable duration in the Southeast of Europe, in the high- 
est maturity of a mind, which had, previously to that residence, 
been enriched with large acquisitions of the most diversified 
literature and scientific knowledge, and by various views of 
society both in England and on the continent ; his friends 
promised themselves, that the action of so much genius, so 
long a time, on such ample materials, M^ould at length result in 
some production, or train of productions, that should pay off* 
some portion of the debt due to the literary republic, from one 
of the most opulent of its citizens. A rather long period, 
however, had elapsed, and several projects had been reported 
in the usual vehicles of literary intelligence, before this paper 
was undertaken. An idea of the mental habits and acquire- 
ments brought to its execution, will be conveyed by an extract 
from the prospectus, which was written in the form of a letter 
to a friend. 



89 

" It is not unknown to you that I have employed almost the whole of 
my life in acquiring;, or endeavouring to acquire, useful knowledge, by 
study, reflection, observation, and by cultivating the society of my supe. 
riors m intellect, both at home and in foreign countries. You know too, 
that, at different periods of my life, I have not only planned, but collected 
the materials for many works on various and important subjects ; so many 
indeed, that the number of my unrealized schemes, and the mass of my 
miscellaneous fragments, have often furnished my friends with a subject 
of raillery, and sometimes of regret and reproof. Waiving the mention of 
all private and accidental hindrances, I am inclined to believe that this 
want of perseverance has been produced in the mam by an over-activity 
of thought, modified by a constitutional indolence, which made it more 
pleasant to me to continue acquiring, than reduce what I had acquired to 
a regular form. Add too, that almost daily throwing off my notices or re- 
flections in desultory fragments, I was still tempted onwards by an in- 
creasing sense of the imperfections of my knowledge, and by the convic- 
tion that, in order fully to comprehend and develope any one subject, it 
was necessary that I should make myself master of some other, W'hich 
again as regularly involved a third, and so on, with an ever-widening hori- 
zon. Yet one habit, formed during long absences from those with whom 
I could converse with full sympathy, has been of advantage to me — 
that of daily writing down in my memorandum or common-place books, 
both incidents and observations ; wdiatever had occurred to me from 
without, and all the flux and reflux of my mind within itself. The number 
of these notices, and their tendency, miscellaneous as tbey were, to one 
common end ('' quid su?nus, et quid futuri g)gni7nur" what we are, and 
what we are to become : and thus from the end of our being to deduce its 
pro-per objects), first encouraged me to undertake the Weekly Essay of 
which you will consider this letter as the prospectus." 

Being printed on stamped paper, these essays were convey- 
ed by the post, free of expense, to any part of the country. In 
the mode of publication, therefore, and what may be called the 
exterior character of the project, " The Friend " was an imita- 
tion of those sets of essays which, from the Tatler down to the 
Rambler, and several much later works, had first supplied en- 
tertainment and instruction in small successive portions, during 
several months or years, and then taken their rank among books 
of permanent popularity. Mr. Coleridge has correctly distin- 
guished, in a brief and general manner, the objects to which 
these works were mainly directed, and rendered a tribute of 
animated applause to their writers ; at the same time bespeak- 
ing the candour of his readers to a series of essays, which should 
attempt to instruct after a very different method. It was avow- 
ed that they would aim much more at the development of gen- 
eral principles ; it would be inferred, of course, that they 
would be of a much more abstract and metaphysical charac- 
ter. Mr. Coleridge fairly warned those whom he invited to 



90 

become his readers, that, though he should hope not unfre- 
quently to interest the affections, and captivate the imagina- 
tion, yet a large proportion of the essays were intended to be 
of a nature, which might require a somewhat resolute exercise 
of intellect. — It was not proposed to terminate the series at 
an assigned point ; it might be expected to proceed as long as 
the writer's industry and resources should command the public 
approbation. With one or two considerable interruptions, it 
reached as far as twenty-eight numbers, and there ended so 
abruptly that a memoir of Sir Alexander Ball was left unfin- 
ished. At several points in the progress of the work, the wri- 
ter confessed that the public patronage was not such as to make 
it probable he could carry it forward to any great length ; but no 
explanation was given of the suddenness of its discontinuance. 
Perhaps it may be questioned, now, after a portion of the 
intended work has been given, whether the project did not in- 
volve some degree of miscalculation. Even the consideration 
of a rather excessive price was likely to affect the success of 
a work which, though coming with some of the exterior marks 
of a newspaper, was yet to derive nearly as little aid from the 
stimulant facts and questions of the day, as if it had been a 
commentary on Aristotle or Plato. A still more unfavourable 
augury might, perhaps, have been drawn from the character of 
Mr. Coleridge's composition, as taken in connexion with the 
haste inseparable from a weekly publication. The cast of 
his diction is so unusual, his trains of thought so habitually for- 
sake the ordinary tracts, and therefore the whole composition 
is so liable to appear strange and obscure, that it was evident 
the most elaborate care, and a repeated revisal, would be in- 
dispensable in order to render so original a mode of writing 
sufficiently perspicuous to be in any degree popular. And it 
is equally evident that the necessity of finishing a sheet within 
each week, against a particular day and hour, must be totally 
incompatible with such patient and matured workmanship. A 
considerable portion of the short allotment of time might, in 
spite of every better resolution, be beguiled away in compara- 
tive indolence ; or it might be consumed by casual and unfore- 
seen avocations ; or rendered fruitless by those lapses into lan- 
guor and melancholy, to which genius, especially of the refin- 
ed and poetic order, is extremely subject ; or even wasted in 
the ineffectual endeavour to fix exclusively on some one of many 
equally eligible subjects. It was to be foreseen that the natu- 



91 

ral consequences would be, sometimes such a degree of haste 
as to leave no possibility of disposing the subject in the simplest, 
clearest order, and giving the desirable compression, and lu- 
cidness, and general finishing to the composition ; sometimes, 
from despair of doing this, a recourse to shifts and expedients 
to make up the number, in a slighter way than had been intend- 
ed, and perhaps promised ; and often a painful feeling of work- 
ing at an ungracious task, especially if, in addition, the public 
approbation should be found to be less liberally awarded than 
had been expected. Such compulsory despatch would haA-e 
been a far less inconvenience in the conducting of a paper in- 
tended merely for amusement, or for the lightest kind of in- 
struction, or as a weekly commentary on the contemporary 
measures and men — ^a department in which the facility and 
attractiveness of the topics, and the voracity of the public, ex- 
empt the writer from any severity of intellectual toil, or solici- 
tude for literary perfection : but it was almost necessarily fatal 
in a work to be often occupied with deep disquisitions, and 
under the added disadvantage that the author had been prevl- 
viously much less accustomed to write than to think. When, 
besides, the work aspired to a very high rank in our perma- 
nent literature, there was perhaps an obvious impolicy in sub- 
jecting it to such circumstances of publication, as should pre- 
clude the minute improvements of even a tenth revision. It 
-should seem probable, on the whole, that a mode better adapt- 
ed to the effective exertion of Mr. Coleridge's great talents 
might have been advised, in the form of a periodical publica 
tion to appear in larger portions, at much longer intervals. 

Some of the consequences thus to be anticipated from the 
plan of the undertaking, are actually perceptible in the course 
of the work. The writer manifests great indecision as to the 
choice and succession of his subjects. Afier he appears to 
have determined on those to be treated in the immediately en- 
suing numbers, those numbers, when they come, may be em- 
ployed on totally different subjects, — introduced by accidental 
suggestion — or from their being such as would be more easily 
worked, in the brief allowance of time, into the required 
length and breadth of composition. Questions avowedly in- 
tended to be argued very early, as involving great fundamental 
principles, are deferred till the reader forgets what the author 
has said of their importance. Various subjects are adverted 
to, here and there in the course of the work, as to be hereafler 



92 coleeidge's feiend. 

investigated, and are never mentioned again. In some in- 
stances, the number to which the commencement or the con- 
clusion of an important inquiry has stood over, will be found 
made up perhaps, for the greater part, of letters, or short frag- 
ments, with translations from a minor Italian poet. Several 
of the numbers, towards the latter end of the series, are em- 
ployed on the character of the late Sir Alexander Ball, which', 
however meritorious, was not probably, in the opinion of the 
majority of the readers, of sufficient celebrity to claim so con- 
siderable a space in an expensive work ; especially while 
several most interesting points of inquiry, of which they had 
been led to expect an early investigation were still, andundefi- 
nitely deferred. It is fair, however, to quote the author's apol- 
ogy or vindication, in vfhich, toward the conclusion of the se- 
ries, he attributes to his reader, the procrastination or relin- 
quishment of the refined disquisitions, which he should himself 
have been happy to prosecute. 

" The remainder of my work, therefore, hitherto, has been devoted to 
the purpose of averting this mistake," (that which had imputed to him a 
coincidence of opinion with the " French physiocratic philosophers") " as 
far as I have been compelled by the general taste of my readers to inter- 
rupt the systematic progress of the plan, by essays of a lighter kind, or 
which at least required a less effort of attention. In truth, since my 
twelfth number, I have not liad courage to renew any subject which did 
require attention. The way to be admired, is to tell the reader what he 
knew before, but clothed in a statelier phraseology, and embodied in apt 
and lively illustrations. To attempt to make a man wiser, is of necessity 
to remind him of his ignorance : and, in the majority of instances, the 
pain actually felt is so much greater than the pleasure anticipated, that it 
is natural that men should attempt to shelter themselves from it by con- 
tempt or neglect. For a living writer is yet sub judice ; and if we can- 
not follow his conceptions or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to 
our pride, as well as more agreeable to our indolence, to consider him as 
lost beneath, rather than as soaring out of our sight above us. Itaque id 
agitur, ut ignorantia etiam ab ignominia liberctur. Plappy is that man, 
who can truly say, with Giordano Bruno, and whoss circumstances at the 
same time permit him to act on the sublime feeling 

" ' Procedat nudus, quem non ornant nubila, 
Sol ! Non conveniunt Quadrupedum phalerae 
Humano dorso ! Porro Veri species 
Qucesita, inventa, at patcfacta, me efferat .' 

Etsi nullus inielligat, 
Si cum naturd ct sub lumine. 

Id vere plusquam satis est.^ " p. 335. 

It may easily be believed that Mr. Coleridge had cause to 
complain of the impatience of some of his readers^ under 



Coleridge's friend*. 93 

those demands of a strong mental exertion which some of his 
essays have made on them ; but the degree of this required 
exertion is greatly underrated, we think, in the following ob- 
servations in the same number. 

" Themes like these, not even the genius of a Plato or a Bacon could 
render intelligible without demanding from the reader, thovght sometimes, 
and attention generally. By thought I here mean the voluntary produc- 
tion in our own minds of those states of consciousness, to which, as to his 
fundamental facts, the writer has referred us : while attention has for its 
object, the order and connexion of thoughts and images, each of which is 
in itself already and familiarly known. Thus the elements of geometry 
require attention only ; but the analysis of our primary faculties, and the 
investigcttion of all the absolute grounds of religion and morals, are impos- 
sible without energies of thought in addition to the effort of attention. 
The Friend never attempted to disguise from his readers, that both atten- 
tion and thought were efforts, and the latter a most difficult and laborious 
effort ; nor from himself, that to reqCiire it often, or for any continuance of 
time, was incompatible with the nature of a periodical publication, even 
were it less incongruous than it unfortunately is, with the present habits 
and pursuits of Englishmen. Accordingly, after a careful re-perusal of 
the preceding numbers, I can discover hut four passages which supposed 
in the reader any energy of thought and voluntary abstraction. But at- 
tention I confess two thirds of the work hitherto have required. On 
whatever subject the mind feels a lively interest, attention, though always 
an effort, becomes a delightful effort ; and I should be quite at ease, could 
I secure for the whole work, as much of it as a party of earnest whist- 
players often expend in a single evening, or a lady in the making up of a 
fashionable dress. But where no interest previously exists, attention (as 
every schoolmaster knows) can be produced only by terror : which is 
the true reason why the majority of mankind learn nothing systematically, 
but as schoolboys or apprentices." 

Not to dwell on the arbitrary and rather tenebrious distinc- 
tion between thought and attention, (which might be given as 
a fair specimen of the extent of the demand made on the read- 
er's mind in a multitude of passages,) we cannot help saying, 
that this is a somewhat too reserved acknowledgment — ^that the 
" Friend" has produced a volume, of which a considerable por- 
tion is hard to be understood, and some passages of which it 
may be doubted whether any one reader, after his very best 
efforts, has felt sure that he did so understand as to be able to 
put the meaning into other equivalent words of his own. We 
cannot but think that, in some still later re-perusal, the author 
himself will have perceived that not a few of his conceptions, 
taken as detached individual thoughts, are enounced with an 
obscurity of a somewhat different kind from that which may- 
seem inevitably incident, in some degree, to the expression of 
5* 



94 Coleridge's friend. 

thoughts of extreme abstraction. And sometimes the conjimc- 
live principle among several thoughts that come in immediate 
succession is so unobvious, that the reader must repeatedly pe- 
ruse, must analyze, we might almost say, must excruciate, a 
considerable portion of the composition, before he can feel any 
confidence that he is master of the connexion ; — and at last he 
is so little sure of having a real hold of the whole combination, 
that he would not trust himself to state that particular part of 
the " Friend's" opinions and sentiments to an intelligent in- 
quirer. When he could perhaps give, in a very general form, 
the apparent result of a series of thoughts, he would be afraid 
to attempt assigning the steps by which his author had arrived 
at it. 

There can be no doul)t that, by such patient labour as the 
adopted mode of publication entirely forbade, the writer could 
have given, if we may so express it, more roundness and prom- 
inence to the logical fibres of his composition, and a more 
unequivocal substance to some of its more attenuated compo- 
nents ; in short, left nothing obscure but what was invincibly 
and necessarily so, from the profound abstraction and exquisite 
refinement of thought, in which Mr. Coleridge would have ex- 
tremely few equals in whatever age he had lived. 

Our contracted limits will not allow more than a very brief 
notice of the several subjects on which the author's intellect 
and imagination have thrown their light and colours, in a 
more fixed or in a momentary manner, in the course of this 
desultory performance. It would be fully as interesting, 
though a more difficult task, to discriminate some of the quali- 
ties which distinguish his manner of thinking and writing : 
and we shall make a short attempt at this, though with no 
small degree of diffidence in our ability to render the more 
subtle characteristics palpable in description. Some of them 
are almost as undefinable, as the varied modifications of the 
air by which very susceptible organs can perceive the differ- 
ent state of that element as subsisting in one district and 
in another ; almost as undefinable, as the tinge by which the 
light of the rising and setting sun in spring or autumn, is re- 
cognised as of a quite different character from its morning and 
evening radiance in the other seasons. 

And while we are making this reference to the elements 
and phenomena of nature, we will confess that this author, be- 
yond any other, (Mr. Wordsworth is next) gives us the im- 



COLERIDGE S FRIEND. 95 

pressioii, or call it the fancy, of a mind constructed to bear a 
certain indescribable analogy to nature — that is, to the physi- 
cal world, with its wide extent, its elements, its mysterious 
laws, its animated forms, and its variety and vicissitude of 
appearances. His mind lives almost habitually in a state of 
profound sympathy with nature, maintained through the medi- 
um of a refined illusion of genius, which informs all nature 
with a kind of soul and sentiment, that bring all its forms and 
entities, animate and inanimate, visible and invisible, into a 
mystical commmiion with his feelings. This sjnnpathy is, or 
involves, an exceedingly different feeling from that with which 
a strictly philosophic mind perceives and admires in nature 
the more definable attributes of variety, order, beauty, and 
grandeur. These are acknowledged with a vivid perception ; 
but, in our author's powerful imagination, they become a kind 
of moral attributes of a half-intelligential principle, which dim- 
ly, but with mysterious attraction, discloses itself from within 
all matter and form. This sympathy has retained him much 
more effectually in what may be called the school of nature, 
than is usual to men of genius who enter so much into artifi- 
cial society, and so extensively study the works of men : and 
the influences of this school have given that form to his habits 
of thinking which bears so many marks of analogy to the state 
of surrounding physical nature. To illustrate this w^e may ob- 
serve, that he perpetually falls on analogies between moral 
truth and facts in nature : in his figurative language he draws 
his similes and metaphors from the scenes of nature in prefer- 
ence to the departments of art — though these latter are also 
very much at his command : his ideas have much of the un- 
limited variety of nature ; they have much also of its irregular- 
ity, being but little constrained into formal artificial method : 
there is in his train of thinking a great deal of what may be 
called colour and efflorescence, and but little of absolutely plain 
bare intellectual material : like nature as to her productions, 
he seems as willing to bestow labour and completeness on lit- 
tle thoughts as on great ones : we may add, he does not show 
any concern about mixing the little and great together, — 
sublime and remote ideas, and humble and familiar ones, being 
readily admitted, if they happen to come in immediate suc- 
cession. 

The above descriptionof our author's sympathy with nature, 
and his mystical perception of something like soul and senti- 



96 Coleridge's friend. 

ment residing in all material elements and forms, will not be 
misunderstood to impute to him any thing like a serious 
adoption of the atheistical principle of Spinoza, or of the Stoic 
or Platonic dogmas about the Soul of the World. This con- 
verse with all surrounding existence is, in the perfect con- 
sciousness of our author's mind, no more than the emanation 
of that mind itself ; imparting, in its meditative enthusiasm, a 
character of imaginary moral being and deep significance to 
all objects, but leaving his understanding in the full and solemn 
belief of a Supreme Intelligence, perfectly distinct from the 
whole universe. But there is strong reason to suspect, that 
certain of his poetical contemporaries renounce the idea of such 
a Divine Intelligence, in their fancy of the all-pervading, in- 
explicable something, which privileged and profoundly thought- 
ful spirits may perceive, and without illusion, in the light of 
the sun, in clouds, in silent groves, and in the sound of winds 
and mountain torrents. 

But we ought to have remarked, first, on some of the 
more easily definable of the distinguishing properties of the 
" Friend's " intellectual character. Among the foremost may 
be mentioned the independence and the wide reach with which 
he thinks. He has given attendance in all the schools of mo- 
ral and metaphysical philosophy, ancient and modern, but evi- 
dently has attended there rather to debate the matter with the 
professors, than with submissive homage to receive their dic- 
tates. He would have been a most factious and troublesome 
pupil in the academy of Pythagoras. He regards all subjects 
and doctrines as within the rightful sphere of free examination : 
and the work affords evidence, that a very large number of 
them have actually been examined by him with extraordinary 
severity. Yet this freedom of thinking, supported as it is by the 
conscious possession of great power, and exceedingly ample 
and diversified knowledge, does not degenerate into arrogance ; 
a high and sincere respect being uniformly shown for the great 
intellectual aristocracy of both the past and present times, but 
especially of the past. Of the eminent writers of our own 
country, he evinces a higher veneration for those of the seven- 
teenth, than those of the subsequent century, and of the present 
time ; and professes to have been of late years more familiar 
with them, and to have involuntarily acquired some degree of 
conformity to their manner of thinking and to their style. 
Another instantly apparent distinction of our author's man- 



coleeidge's friend. 97 

ner of thinking, is its extreme abstractedness. Considering 
that many of his subjects are not of that class which, by the 
necessity of their nature, can be discussed in no other than a 
metaphysical manner, he has avoided, in a wonderful and une- 
qualled degree, all the superficial and obvious forms of thought 
which they might suggest. He always carries on his investi- 
gation at a depth, and sometimes a most profound depth, below 
the uppermost and most accessible stratum ; and is philoso- 
phically mining among its most recondite principles of the sub- 
ject, while ordinary intellectual and literary workmen, many 
of them barely informed of the very existence of this Spirit of 
the Deep, are pleasing themselves and those they draw around 
them, with forming to pretty shapes or commodious uses, the 
materials of the surface. It may be added, with some little 
departure from the consistency of the metaphor, that if he en- 
deavours to make his voice heard from this region l)eneath, it 
is apt to be listened to as a sound of dubious import, like that 
which fails to bring articulate words from the remote recess of 
a cavern, or the bottom of the deep shaft of a mine. However 
familiar the truths and facts to which his mind is directed, it 
constantly, and as if involuntarily, strikes, if we may so speak, 
into the invisible and the unknown of the subject : he is seek- 
ing the most retired and abstracted form in which any being 
can be acknowledged and realized as having an existence, or 
any truth can be put in a proposition. He turns all things into 
their ghosts, and summons us to walk with him in this region 
of shades — this strange world of disembodied truth and enti- 
ties. 

He repeatedly avows, that it is less his object to teach truth 
in its most special and practical form, and in its detailed ap- 
plication, than to bring up into view and certainty a number 
of grand general principles, to become the lights of judgment, 
on an endless variety of particular subjects. At least this was 
the proposed object of the earlier part, the first twenty or thir- 
ty numbers, of the intended series. These principles were to 
be brought into clearness and authority, partly by statement and 
argument in an abstract form, and partly by showing them 
advantageously in operation, as applied to the trial and decis- 
ion of several interesting questions. But the abstruseness 
often unavoidable in the pure intellectual enunciation of a 
principle, prevails also in an uncommon degree, in the pres- 
ent work, through the practical illustrations — even when the 



98 Coleridge's friend. 

matter of those illustrations consists of very familiar facts. 
The ideas employed to explain the mode of the relation be- 
tween the facts and the principle, are sometimes of such ex- 
treme tenuity as to make a reader who is anxious to compre- 
hend, but unaccustomed to abstraction, feel as if he were defi- 
cient by nearly one whole faculty, some power of intellectual 
sight or tact with which he perceives the author to be endow- 
ed, — for there is something that every where compels him to 
give the author credit for thinking with great acuteness, even 
when he is labouring in vain to reline his own conceptions in- 
to any state that can place him in real communication with 
the author's mind. The surpassing subtlety of that mind 
is constantly descrying the most unobvious relations, and 
detecting the most veiled aspects of things, and pervading 
their substance in quest of whatever is most latent in their 
nature. This extreme subtlety is the cause of more than 
one kind of difficulty to the reader. It^ necessary conse- 
quence is that refinement of observation on which we have 
so prolixly remarked ; but it has another consequence, the 
less or greater degree of which depended on the author's 
choice. He has suffered it continually to retard him in, 
or divert him from, the straightforward line of thought to his 
object. He enters on a train of argumentative observations 
to determine a given question. He advances one acute 
thought, and another, and another : but by this time he perceives 
among these which we may call the primary thoughts, so many 
secondaries — so many bearings, distinctions, and analogies — 
so many ideas starting sideways from the main line of thought 
— so many pointings towards subjects infinitely remote — that, 
in the attempt to seize and fix in words these secondary 
thoughts, he will often suspend for a good while the progress 
toward the intended point. Thus each thought that w^as to 
have been only one thought, and to have transmitted the reader's 
mind immediately forward to the next in order and in advance, 
becomes an exceedingly complex combination of thoughts, al- 
most a dissertation in miniature : and thus our journey to the 
assigned point (if indeed we are carried so far, which is not 
always the case) becomes nothing less than a visit of curious 
inspection to every garden, manufactory, museum, and anti- 
quity, situated near the road, throughout its whole length. 
Hence too it often happens, that the transitions are not a little 
perplexing. The transition directly from one primary thought, 



COLERIDGE S FRIEND. 99 

as we venture to call it, in the train to the next, might be very 
easy : we might see most perfectly how, in natural logic, the 
one was connected with the other, or led to it : but when we 
have to pass to this next principal thought in the train, from 
some divergent and remote accessory of the former principal 
idea, we feel that we have lost the due bearing of the preceding 
part of the train, by being brought in such an indirect way to 
the resumption of it. 

The same kind of observation is applicable to the compari- 
sons and metaphors with which our author illustrates and 
adorns his speculations. In this component of good writing, 
we believe he has no superior in this or any other age. His 
figures are original, and various, and often comj)Iexly apposite, 
to a degree of which we do not at present recollect any exam- 
ple. They are taken indifferently from any part of a prodigious 
sphere of knowledge, and presented with every possible ad- 
vantage of rich and definite expression. In the choice of them 
he very justly scorns, Avhat has been noticed as a leading point 
of contradistinction of the French orators and poets from ours, 
the fastidiousness which declines similes taken from things of 
so humble a quality as to give to the figure a character of 
meanness. While he can easily reach, if he pleases, as far 
into remoteness and magnificence as the aphelion of a comet, for 
an object of illustrative comparison, he is not afraid to turn to 
literary account in the next paragraph, even a thing of so little 
dignity as those fastenings of garments called hooks and eyes. 
But the fault we venture to charge is, analogously to what we 
have said of the more austerely intellectual parts of the compo- 
sition, the frequent extension of a figure into a multiformity 
which beguiles both the author and reader from the direct and 
pressing pursuit of the main object. When the object is grave 
and important truth, the beauties of imagery, when introduced 
with a copiousness greatly beyond the strictest necessities of 
explanation, should be so managed as to be like flowery bor- 
ders of a road : the way may have on each side every variety 
of beauty, every charm of shape, and hue, and scent, to regale 
the traveller : but, it should still be absolutely a road — going 
right on — with defined and near limits — and not widening out 
into a spacious and intricate wilderness of these beauties, 
M'here the man that was to travel is seduced to wander. 
When an apt figure occurs to our author, his imagination, 
(which has received with wonderful accuracy, and retained 



100 

with wonderful fidelity, all the ascertainable points of appear- 
ance and quality of almost all objects), instantaneously ex- 
pands and finishes this figure, within his own mind, into a 
complete object or scene, with all its absolute and relative 
distinctions and circumstances ; and his intellectual subtlety 
suddenly perceives, besides its principal and most obvious 
analogy Avith the abstract truth he is stating, various other 
more refined and minute analogies and appositenesses, which 
are more gratifying to his own mind than the leading analogy, 
partly from the consideration that only a very acute perception 
would have discerned them, and partly because a double intel- 
lectual luckiness is more unusuul than a single one. Now, 
we have mentioned the complexity of appositeness, the several- 
fold relation between the figure and the truth to which it is 
brought as correspondent, as one of the excellencies, of our 
author's figures : and we have done so, because none but a 
writer of great genius will very frequently fallen such figures 
— and because a very specific rather than a merely general 
relation, an interior and essential rather than a superficial 
and circumstantial analogy, between the subject and the cor- 
responding figure, is a great excellence as exhibiting the laws 
of reason prevalent through the operations of imagination ; 
and it would often be found that the specific and pointed ap- 
propriateness of the comparison consists in its containing a 
double analogy. But when a subtle intelligence, perceiving 
something much beyond this duplicity of relation, introduces 
a number of perhaps real and exquisite, but extremely recondite 
correspondences, the reader, though pleased with the sagacious 
perception, so long as not confused by the complexity, is, at 
the same time, certainly diverted from the leading purpose of 
the discourse. 

It is not alone in the detection of refined analogies that our 
author too much amplifies his figurative illustrations. He does 
it sometimes in the way of merely perfecting, for the sake of 
its own completeness, the representation of the thing which 
furnishes the figure, which is often done equally with phi- 
losophical accuracy and poetic beauty. But thus extended 
into particularity, the illustration exhibits a number of colours, 
and combinations, and branchings of imagery, neither needful 
nor useful to the main intellectual purpose. Our author is 
therefore sometimes like a man, who, in a work that requires 
the use of wood, but requires it only in the plain bare form of 



Coleridge's friend. 101 

straight- shaped poles and stakes, should insist that it shall be 
living Avood, retaining all its t\vigs, leaves, and blossoms. Or, 
if we might compare the series of ideas in a composition to a 
military line, we should say that many of our author's images, 
and of even his more abstracted conceptions, are supernumer- 
arily attended by so many related, but secondary and subor- 
dinate ideas, that the array of thought bears some resemblance 
to what that military line would be, if many of the men, verita- 
ble and brave soldiers all the while, stood in the ranks sur- 
rounded with their wives and children. 

Of the properties which we have attempted, we sincerely 
acknowledge very inadequately, to discriminate and describe 
as characteristic of our author's mode of writing, the result is, 
that readers of ordinary, though tolerably cultivated faculties, 
feel a certain deficiency of the effective force which they be- 
lieve such an extraordinary course of thinking ought to have 
on their minds. They feel, decisively, that they are under the 
tuition of a most uncommonly powerful and far-seeing spirit, 
that penetrates into the essences of things, and can also 
strongly define their forms and even their shadows — and that 
is quite in earnest to communicate, while they are equally in 
earnest to obtain, the most important principles which such a 
mind has deduced from a severe examination of a vast variety 
of facts and books. And yet there is some kind of haze in the 
medium through which this spirit transmits its light, or there is 
some vexatious dimness in the mental faculty of seeing : so 
that, looking back from the end of an essay, or of the volume, 
they really do not feel themselves in possession of any thing 
like the full value of as much ingenious, and sagacious, and 
richly-illustrated thinking as ever, probably, was contained in 
the same proportion of writing. 

We would not set down much of the difficulty of compre- 
hending so much complained of, to the language^ so far as it is 
distinguishable from the thought ; with the exception of here 
and there a scholastic phrase, and a certain degree of peculi- 
arity in the use of one or tAvo terms — especially reason, which 
he uses in a sense in which he endeavours to explain and 
prove, that all men are in equally full possession of the faculty 
which it denominates. Excepting so far as a slight tinge of 
antiqueness indicates the influence of our older writers, espe- 
cially Milton and Bacon, on the complexion of our author's 
language, it is of a construction original in the greatest possible 



102 Coleridge's friend. 

degree. That it could not well be otherwise may easily be 
supposed, when, premising, as we have done, the originality of 
the author's manner of thinking, we observe that the diction 
is in a most extraordinary degree conformed to the thought. 
It lies, if we may so speak, close to the mental surface, with 
all its irregularities, throughout. It is therefore perpetually 
varying, in perfect flexibility and obsequiousness to the ideas ; 
and, without any rhetorical regulation of its changes, or ap- 
parent design, or consciousness in the writer, is in succession 
popular and scientific, familiar and magnificent, secular and 
theological, plain and poetical. It has none of the phrases or 
combinations of oratorical common-place : it has no settled 
and favourite appropriations of certain adjectives to certain 
substantives : its manner of expressing an idea once, gives the 
reader no guess how the same idea will be expressed when it 
comes modified by a different combination. The writer con- 
siders the whole congregation of words, constituting our lan- 
guage, as something so perfectly and independently his own, 
that he may make any kind of use of any part of it that his think- 
ing requires. Almost every page, therefore, presents unusual 
combinations of words, that appear not so much made for the 
thought as made hy it, and often give, if we may so express it, 
the very colour, as well as the substantial form, of the idea. 
There is no settled construction or cadence of the sentences ; 
no two, perhaps, of about the same length being constructed 
in the same manner. From the complexity and extended 
coml^ination of the thought, they are generally long, which 
the author something less than half-apologizes for, and there- 
fore something more than half-defends. We will quote what 
he says on this point. 

" Doubtless, too, I have in some measure injured my style in respect to 
its facility and popularity, from having almost confined my reading, of 
late years, to the works of the ancients, and those of the elder writers in 
the modern languages. We insensibly admire what we habitually imi- 
tate ; and aversion to the epigrammatic unconnected periods of the fash- 
ionable Anglo-Gallican taste, has too often made me wiUing to forget, that 
the stately march and difficult evolutions, which characterize the eloquence 
of Hooker, Bacon, Milton, and Jeremy Taylor, are, notwithstanding their 
intrinsic excellence, still less suited to a periodical essay. This fault I am 
now endeavouring to correct, though I can never so far sacrifice my 
judgment to the desire of being immediately popular, as to cast my sen. 
tences in the French moulds, or affect a style which an ancient critic 
would have deemed purposely invented for persons troubled with asthma, 
to read, and for those to comprehend who labour under the more pitiable 



103 

asthma of a short- wittcd Intellect. It cannot but be injurious to the hu- 
man mind never to be called into effort ; and the habit of receiving pleas- 
ure without any exercise of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity 
and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of novel- 
reading. It is true, that these short and unconnected sentences are easily 
and instantly understood : but it is equally true, that, wanting all the 
cement of thought as well as of style, all the connections, and (if you will 
forgive so trivial a metaphor) all the hooks-and-eyes of the memory, they 
are easily forgotten ; or ratlaer, it is scarcely possible they should be 
remembered. Nor is it less true that those who confine their reading to 
such books, dwarf their ov/n faculties, and finally reduce their imderstand- 
ings to a deplorable imbecility." — P. 166. 

He might, in contradiction to the vulgar notion that long 
sentences necessarily show the author guilty of what is termed 
difFuseness, have added, that length of sentences furnishes a 
capital mean of being concise ; that, in fact, whoever is de- 
termined on the greatest possible parsimony of words, must 
write in long sentences, if there is any thing like combination 
in his thoughts. For, in a long sentence, several indispensa- 
ble conditionalties, collateral notices, and qualifying or con- 
necting circumstances, may be expressed by short members of 
the sentence, which must else be put in so many separate sen- 
tences ; thus making two pages of short sentences to express, 
and in a much less connected manner, what one well-con- 
structed long sentence would have expressed in half a page : — 
and yet an unthinking reader might very possibly cite these 
two pages as a specimen of concise writing, and such a half 
page as a sample of diffuseness. 

We had intended to make a few remarks on the several 
essays in this volume, considered as to their subjects ; and on 
the most prominent of the principles endeavoured to be illus- 
trated and established. But we have dwelt so long on the 
more general qualities of its intellectual and literary characteij 
that our readers will very willingly excuse us from prolonging 
a course of observations, in which we have by no means suc- 
ceeded to our wish in the attempt to convey a general idea of 
the most extraordinary production that has, at any time, come 
under our official notice. We confess, too, that we should feel 
no small degree of diffidence in undertaking any thing like an 
analysis of disquisitions so abstruse, so little reduced to the 
formal arrangement of system, so interrupted and unfinished, 
and so often diverging to a great distance from the leading di- 
rection. 

The subjects largely discussed are few. Among them are, 



104 Coleridge's friend. 

the duty and laws of communicating truth, inchiding the liberty 
of the press ; the theories of the several most celebrated politi- 
cal philosophers, or schools of philosophers ; errors of party- 
spirit ; vulgar errors respecting taxation ; the law of nations ; 
Paley's doctrine of general consequences as the foundation of 
the criterion of morality ; sketches of Sir Alexander Ball ; the 
proper discipline for rising, in point of intellectual freedom and 
vigour, above the general state of the age ; and several other 
topics of less comprehensive denomination. But no adequate 
guess can be made, from these denominations, at the variety 
and latitude of the inquiries and observations. There is not a 
great deal expressly on the subject of religion ; the intended 
statement of the author's general views of it having been de- 
layed till the work prematurely closed ; but there are many 
occasional references in a spirit of great seriousness. He 
asserts the radical depravity, to a very great extent, of human 
nature, though in forms of language most widely different, to 
be sure, from that of orthodox sermons and bodies of divinity. 
As the basis, however, of some of his principles of moral phi- 
losophy, he claims a certain profound and half mystical reve- 
rence for the mental and moral essence and organization of 
man, which we find it somewhat difficult to render. He is a 
most zealous assertor of free-agency. In one place the word 
Methodism is used exactly in the Avay in which it is employed 
by those whom the author knows to be fools, profligates, or 
bigots. He is perfectly apprized, how much of intelligent be- 
lief and ardent piety is comprehended within the tenets and 
the state of the affections, to which this term of opprobrium is 
generally applied ; and we were astonished therefore to see 
him so far consenting to adopt what he knew to be the lingo 
of irreligion. 

A portion of his political reasonings and reflections, is retro- 
spective to the times of the French revolution ; and distin- 
guishes and censures, with very great judgment and eloquence, 
the respective errors of our aristocratic and democratic parties 
at that time. Some interesting references are made to the 
author's own views, and hopes, and projects at that period. 
As those views and projects had nothing to do with revolutions 
in England, we wish that some passages expressed in the 
tone of self-exculpation had been spared. It was no great 
harm, if a young man of speculative and ardent genius saw 
nothing in the political state of any country in Christendom to 



105 

prevent his wishing, that a new constitution of society could 
be tried somewhere in the wildernesses of America. In his 
professing to have very long since renounced the visionary 
ideas and m ishes which, under various modifications of the 
notion and the love of liberty, elated so many superior minds 
in that eventful season, we were anxious to see him preserve 
the dignity of keeping completely clear of the opposite extreme 
of approving all things as they are — to see him preserve, in 
short, the lofty spirit in which he wrote, many years since, his 
sublime " Ode to France." And there is in the work less to 
displease on that head, that in many instances of the " impetu- 
ous recoil" of men of talents from the principles of violent de- 
mocracy. But we confess we have perceived a more favoura- 
ble aspect than we should deem compatible with the spirit of a 
perfect moralist, philanthropist, and patriot, towards the pre- 
sent state of political institutions and practices. We should think 
that at least these are not times to extenuate the evil of enor- 
mous taxation ; to make light of the suggestion of the superior 
benefit of employing a given number of men rather in making 
canals and building bridges than in destructive military expe- 
ditions ; to celebrate the happiness of having the much greater 
part of a thousand millions of a national debt, and the attendant 
benefit of a paper-currency ; or to join in reprobating any party 
who are zealous for a reform of the legislature and political 
corruptions. There is, however, in the work, much acute 
speculation on political systems that has no direct reference to 
the practical politics of the day. It should be observed too, 
that, beyond all other political speculators, our author mingles 
important moral and philosophical principles with his reason- 
ings. 

The most of what may be called entertainment, may per- 
haps be found in a number of letters written from Germany by 
a young Englishman, who passed among his college com- 
panions by the name of Satyrane, and whom, if there were 
not so much said or implied in his praise, accompanied too by 
some slight expression as if he were not now surviving, we 
should mightily suspect to be no other than the author him- 
self. 

A whole number (the thirteenth) is occupied with the sto- 
ry of a tragical event that happened at Nuremberg, a little 
before Mr. Coleridge first saw that place. The principal 
personages were a baker's orphan and outcast daughter, and 



106 Coleridge's friend. 

a washerwoman. He is very particular in asserting the truth 
of the account ; but if he had not, we should have believed 
it nevertheless ; for the plain reason, that we think it surpass- 
es the powers of fiction, the powers of invention of even Mr. 
Coleridge. No abstract can be given to make it at all intel- 
ligible ; but it is so strange, so horrible, and so sublime, that 
we should think meanly of the feelings of any person, who, 
after reading it, would not turn with indifference, from the 
comparative insipidity of any thing to be found in tragedy or 
romance. 

We ought to have given a few extracts from the work ; but 
we did not know where to select them, amidst such a wilder- 
ness of uncommon ideas. Many other passages may be more 
interesting than the following representation of one of Luther's 
skirmishes with Satan, in the Warteburg, a castle near Eis- 
enach, in which he was confined many months, by a friendly 
and provident force, and where our author was shown the 
black mark on the wall, produced, as every visitant is told, by 
the intrepid reformer's throwing his ink-stand at the enemy. 

" If this christian Hercules, this heroic cleanser of the Augean stable 
of apostacy, had been born and educated in the present age, or the preced- 
ing generation, he would doubtless have held himself for a man of genius 
and original power. But with this faith alone he would hardly have re- 
moved the mountains which he did remove. The darkness and supersti- 
tion of the age, which required such a reformer, had moulded his mind for 
the reception of ideas concerning himself, better suited to inspire the 
strength and enthusiasm necessary for the task of reformation, ideas more 
in sympathy with the spirits whom he was to influence. He deemed him- 
self gifted with supernatural impulses, an especial servant of heaven, a 
chosen warrior, fighting as the general of a small but faithful troop, 
against an army of evil beings, headed by the prince of the air. These 
were no metaphorical beings in his apprehension. He was a poet indeed, as 
great a poet as ever lived in any age or country ; but his poetic images were 
so vivid that they mastered the poet's own mind. He was possessed with 
them, as with substances distinct from himself : Luther did not write, he 
acted poems. The Bible was a spiritual indeed, but not ^figurative aV' 
mory, in his behalf ; it was the magazine of his warlike stores, and from 
thence he was to arm himself, and supply both shield, and sword, and ja- 
velin, to the elect. Methinks I see him sitting, the heroic student in the 
Warteburg, with his midnight lamp before him, seen by the late traveller 
in the plain Bischofsroda, as a star on the mountain. Below it lies the 
Hebrew Bible open, on which he gazes, his brow pressing on his palm, 
brooding over some obscure text, which he desires to make plain to the 
eimple boor, and to the humble artisan, and to transfer its whole force into 
their own natural and living tongue. And he himself does not under- 
stand it I Thick darkness lies on the original text : he counts the letters. 



coleeidge's friend. 107 

he calls up the roots of each separate word, and questions them as the 
familiar spirits of an oracle. In vain : thick darkness continues to cover 
it ! not a ray of meaning darts through it. With sullen and angry hope 
he reaches for the Vulgate, his old and sworn enemy, the treacherous con- 
federate of the Roman anti-Christ, which he bo gladly, when he can, re- 
bukes for idolatrous falsehoods, which had dared place 
• Within the sanctuary itself their shrines 
Abominations !' — 
Now — O thought of humiliation — he must entreat its aid. See ! there 
has the sly spirit of apostacy worked in a phrase, which favours the doc- 
trine of purgatory, the intercession of saints, or the efficacy of prayers for 
them. And what is worse than all, the interpretation is plausible. The 
original Hebrew might be forced into this meaning : and no other mean- 
ing seems to lie in it, none to hover over it in the heights of allegory, none 
to lurk beneath it even in the depths of Cabala ! This is the work of the 
tempter ! It is a cloud of darkness, conjured up between the truth of the 
sacred letters and the eyes of his understanding, by the malice of the 
evil one, and for a trial of his faith ! Must he then confess, must he sub- 
scribe the name of Luther to an exposition which consecrates a weapon 
for the hand of the idolatrous hierarchy ? Never ! never ! 

" There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the translation of the 
Seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, anterior to the church itself, could 
intend no support to its corruptions — the Septuagint will have profaned the 
altar of truth with no incense for the nostrils of the universal bishop to 
snufF up. And here again his hopes are baffled ! Exactly at this per- 
plexed passage had the Greek translator given his understanding a holi- 
day, and made his pen supply its place. O honoured Luther, as easily 
mightest thou convert the whole city of Rome, with the pope and the con- 
clave of cardinals inclusive, as strike a spark of light from the words, and 
nothing but words, of the Alexandrine version. Disappointed, despondent, 
enraged, ceasing to think, yet continuing his brain on the stretch, in solicita- 
tion of a thought, and gradual!}" giving himself up to angry fancies, to recol- 
lections of past persecutions, to uneasy fears and inward defiances, and 
floating images of the evil being, their supposed personal author, he sinks, 
without perceiving it, into a trance of slumber ; during which his brain 
retains its waking energies, excepting that what would have been mere 
thoughts before, now (the action and counterweight of his outward senses, 
and their impressions being withdrawn) shape and condense themselves 
into things, into realities ! Repeatedly half. waking, and his eye-lids as 
often re-closing, the objects which really surround him form the place and 
scenery of his dream. All at once he sees the arch-fiend coming forth 
on the wall of the room, from the very spot, perhaps, on which his eyes 
had been fixed vacantly during the perplexed moments of his former med- 
itation ; the inkstand, which he had at the same time been using, be- 
comes associated with it ; and in that struggle of rage, which in these 
distempered dreams almost constantly precedes the helpless terror by the 
pain of which we are finally awakened, he imagines that he hurls it at 
the intruder, or not improbably in the first instant of awakening, while yet 
both his imagination and his eyes are possessed by the dream, he actually 
hurls it. Some weeks after, perhaps, during which he had often mused 
on the incident, undetermined whether to deem it a viisitation of Satan to 



108 Coleridge's friend. 

him in the body or out of the body, he discovers the dark spot on the wall, 
and receives it as a sign and pledge to hirn of the event having actually 
taken place." — P. 125. 

We cannot conclude without expressing an earnest wish, 
that this original thinker and eloquent writer may be persuad- 
ed to put the literary public speedily in possession, by suc- 
cessive volumes of essays, of an ample portion of those refined 
speculations, the argument and the strongest illustrations of 
which he is well known to have in an almost complete state 
in his mind — and many of which will never be in any other 
mind, otherwise than as communicated from him. The chief 
alteration desirable, for his readers' sake, to be made in his 
mode of writing, is a resolute restriction on that mighty pro- 
fusion and excursiveness of thought, in which he is tempted to 
suspend the pursuit and retard the attainment of the one dis- 
tinct object which should be clearly kept in view ; and, added 
to this, a more patient and prolonged effort to reduce the ab- 
struser part of his ideas as much as their subtle quality will 
possibly admit, to a substantial and definable form. 



From another critique on Cottle's "Recollections op 
Coleridge," the concluding paragraphs are extracted ; be- 
cause they furnish Mr. Foster's complete portrait of that phi- 
losopher. 

Coleridge's religious opinions are interspersed or inter- 
woven through a wide extent of all sorts of subjects and 
speculations. We are not aware of Mr. Cottle's authority for 
expecting "a great posthumous work, to elucidate and estab- 
lish the everlasting principles of Christian truth, and to exhibit 
a system of Christian Ethics." — If the work should actually 
appear, it will be a signally remarkable and memorable phe- 
nomenon, as combining a far greater variety of properties, 
and what may be called colours, than any other of the class. 
It will be learned, historical, philosophical, metaphysical, 
scholastical,* subtle, profound, fanciful, mystical, poetical in il- 

* Coleridge is remembered to have said that he had read all Thomas Aqui- 
nas ; a most enormouy hyperbole, of course. Apart from the formidable 
array of that miraculous Doctor's other writings, let any one look at or 
into the gigantic volume of the Summa Theologia, built up of myriads of 
logical ingenuities, conflicting arguments, distinctions real and unreal, 



COLERIDGE S FRIE^"D. 109 

lustration, and strongly tinctured with the phraseology unfor- 
tunately acquired from the German academics. The work 
cannot fail to contain much that will be valuable ; but still, as 
to the truth and authority of the Christian religion, we are 
tempted to ask what new lights can be shed, what more valid 
arguments can be produced, what quietus of controversy, what 
fiery element for blasting the fallacies of scepticism 1 

But another work was repeatedly announced by him as 
on the point of coming into the light, under the title of Elements 
of Discourse, purporting to be something like a new system of 
logic. And here again, whatever new arrangements, what- 
ever transfers or partitions of provinces, a revolutionary hand 
may impose on logic as a technical science, we may be per- 
mitted to doubt whether any great practical improvements can 
be brought to the economy of thinking, after we have been so 
long familiarly in the company of the most effective thinkers 
that ever lived, or that human nature is capable of producing. 
Nor, with all our respect for intellectual endowments so emi- 
nently extraordinary, can we rid ourselves of the impression 
that our logical reformer's own example is far from affording 
an auspicious omen. 

There may be those who, from patient attention, great ef- 
fort, and unusual mental strength in making that effort, have 
the consciousness of a satisfactory understanding of the tenour 
of his speculations. They could perhaps give them back, 
point by point, in language of their own. But assuredly a 
very great proportion of his readers, of at least moderate and 
not unexercised intellect, find themselves grievously at a loss 
in parts, and unsuccessful on the whole. There has, indeed, 
been no little affectation in the matter. Not a few, aware of 
the writer's great fame, unwilling to seem deficient in capa- 
city, and perhaps really admiring particular parts of his works, 
have concealed their consciousness of being often baffled in 
the study, under a dissembling show of applause, while they 
would have shrunk from the test of having to state the exact 
import of what they had read. 

For one thing, it is quite obvious that Coleridge, afler set- 
ting before his readers the theme, the 07ie theme apparently, 

on all things in existence, in possibility, and in neither the one nor tho 
other. Coleridge added, that he could give a general view of the spec- 
uktions of the schoolmen. But this he might do from Brucker. 



110 COLERIDGE S FKIEXD. 

undertaken to be elucidated, could not, or would not, proceed 
in a straight forward course of explanation, argument, and ap- 
propriate illustration from fancy ; keeping in sight before him 
a certain ultimate object ; and placing marks, as it were, of 
the steps and stages of the progress. He takes up a topic 
which we much desire to see examined, a question which we 
should be glad to see disposed of, and begins with good pro- 
mise in preparatory observations, but, after a short advance, 
the train of discussion appears to lose or abandon its direction ; 
veers off arbitrarily, or at the call of accident ; complicates 
what should be the immediate question with secondary, rela- 
tive, or even quite foreign matters ; arrests itself, perhaps, in a 
philological dissertation on a particular term that comes in 
the way ; resumes, nominally, at an interval, the leading pur- 
pose ; but with a ready propensity to stray again into any col- 
lateral track, and thence into the next, and the next ; till at last 
we come out as from an enchanted wood ; hardly knowing 
whither, and certainly not knowing how to retrace the mazy 
course ; having seen, it is true, divers remarkable objects, 
and glimpses to a distance on either hand ; but not having ob- 
tained the one thing which we imagined we were conducted 
to pursue. When we have asked ourselves, Now w^hat is the 
result, as to the purpose we started with in such excellent com- 
pany ? we could not tell. 

We have sometimes felt as if our instructor were playing 
the necromancer with us ; causing shapes of intelligence to 
come before us as if ready to reveal the secrets we were inquir- 
ing about ; but making them vanish when they were open- 
ing the semblance of a mouth ; again bringing them or others, 
grave and bearded, or of more pleasant visage ; and when 
they are getting into hopeful utterance, presto, they are gone. 
Or perchance, if sometimes permitted to say on, it may happen 
that they emit such an oracle that we are in danger of mutter- 
ing, after a pause, "There needeth no ghost to tell us that." 

Another too evident characteristic of his writing is what we 
may denominate an arbitrary ahstruseness. No doubt, the ex- 
treme subtlety and abstraction of his speculation at one time, 
and its far reach at another, — the recondite principles and re- 
mote views in which he delighted to contemplate a subject — 
must necessarily and inevitably throw somewhat of a charac- 
ter of obscurity, indistinctness, shall we say unrealily^ over 
his intellectual creations, as looked upon by minds of but mo- 



Coleridge's friend. Ill 

derate perspicacity and discipline. But still, we think he 
might have forced them up, if we may so express it, into a more 
palpable form; might have presented them more in relief and 
nearer to the eye ; so that their substances, figure, junctures, 
transitions, should have been more distinct, more real to the 
reader's perception. Instead of being content to trace out and 
note the mental process just as he performed it^br himself^ in 
his own peculiar manner, and requiring to be understood on 
his own conditions (the whole of the accommodation and adap- 
tation for understanding him being on the part and at the cost 
of the student, who was to be despised if he failed) he might at 
least have met the student half way, by working his thoughts 
into a cast more like the accustomed manner of shaping and 
expressing ideas among thinking men. When the reader 
thinks he has mastered the full meaning of a section or para- 
graph, he feels confident that the portion of thought might be 
put in a more perspicuous form, without injury to even a re- 
finement in any part of its consistence ; and that it would have 
been so in the hands of Hume, for example, or Stewart. But 
Coleridge seems resolute to carry on his process at the great- 
est distance from the neighbourhood of common thinking. Or 
if the plain nature of the subject compels him to perform it 
nearer at hand, he must, lest any thing should be vulgarly tan- 
gible, make every substance under operation fly off in gas. 

Not a little of the obscurity complained of may be owing 
to the strange dialect which he fabricated for himself, partly 
of his own invention, and partly from the German terminology ; 
which never will or can be naturalized in English literature, 
whatever efforts are making, or to be made, to deprave our lan- 
guage with it — an impossibility at which, as plain Englishmen, 
we sincerely rejoice. If the greater part of the philosophy, 
for which it was constructed as the vehicle, shall keep its dis- 
tance too, so much the better. That inseparable vehicle it- 
self will debar it (and Coleridge is a proof) from all chance of 
extensive acceptance. 

Notwithstanding all these animadversions, it were little bet- 
ter than an impertinence to say that his writings (we make no 
reference to the beauties of his poetry) contain, though unfor- 
tunately in such a scattered miscellaneous disorder, very much 
that is admirable and valuable. There are acute and just 
discriminations, profound reflections, sagacious conjectures, 
and felicitous images, without number. In portions and pas- 



112 

sages no professed disciple can admire him more than 
we do. 

It is cause for great regret, that a mind so powerful, ori- 
ginal, and amply furnished, should have been withheld, by a 
combination of causes, including those of which we have at- 
tempted a slight indication, from taking that primary rank in 
philosophy and literature, for which nature seemed to have 
designed it. We have not the means to know what may have 
been the effect and extent of his influence in the secondary 
mode, of his personal communications with many able men. 
But as regarded solely in the capacity of an author, he is 
(hitherto) one of the most remarkable instances in history, of 
the disproportion between splendid talents and success, in the 
ordinary sense of success, with the cultivated portion of the 
public. 



113 



IV. 

FOX'S JAMES II. 



History of the early Part of the Reign of James the Second; 
with an Iniroductory ChajJter. By the Right Hon. Charles 
James Fox. To which is added An Appendix. 

Many of our celebrated countrymen will always be recol- 
lected with regret, by persons who take the most serious view 
of human characters and affairs ; but there is no name in the 
English records of the past century, that excites in us so much 
of this feeling as that of the author of this work. The regret 
arises from the consideration of what such a man might have 
been, and might have done. As to talents, perhaps no emi- 
nent man was ever the subject of so little controversy, or ever 
more completely deterred even the most perverse spirit of 
singularity from hazarding a hint of doubt or dissent, by the 
certainty of becoming utterly ridiculous. To pretend to talk 
of any superior man was the same thing, except among a few 
of the tools or dupes of party, as to name generals to whom 
Hannibal, or Scipio, or Julius Caesar ought to have been but 
second in command ; or poets from whose works the mind 
must descend to those of Shakspeare and Milton. If all politi- 
cal partialities could be suspended in forming the judgment, 
we suppose the great majority of intelligent men would pro- 
nounce Fox the greatest orator of modern times ! and they 
would be careful to fix the value of this verdict by observing, 
that they used the term orator in the most dignified sense in 
which it can be understood. Other speakers have had more 
of what is commonly and perhaps not improperly called bril- 
liance, more novelty and luxuriance of imagery, more sudden 
flashes, points, and surprises, and vastly more magnificence 
of language. Burke especially was such a speaker ; and 
during his oration, the man of intelligence and taste was de- 
lighted to enthusia-Fnr, in feeling that something so neAv as to 
defy all conjectural anticipation was sure to burst on him at 
every fourth or fifth sentence, and in beholdmg a thousand 



114 FOX S JAMES THE SECOND. 

forms and phantoms of thought, as if suddenly brought from 
all parts of the creation, most lucklily and elegantly associated 
with a subject to which no mortal had ever imagined that any 
one ot them could have been related before. Yet this very 
auditor, if he had wished to have a perplexing subject lumi- 
nously simplified, or a vast one contracted, according to a just 
scale, to his understanding ; if he had wished to put himself 
in distinct possession of the strongest arguments for maintain- 
ing the same cause in another place ; if he had been anxious to 
qualify himself for immediate action in anaflair in which he had 
not yet been able to satisfy himself in deliberation ; or if he had 
been desirous for his coadjutors in any important concern to have 
a more perfect comprehension of its nature, and a more absolute 
conviction as to the right principles and measures to be adopted 
respecting it, than all his efforts could give them, he would 
have wished, beyond all others, to draw Fox's mind to bear on 
the subject. For ourselves, we think we never heard any 
man who dismissed us from the argument on a debated topic 
with such a feeling of satisfied and final conviction, or such a 
competence to tell why we were convinced. There was, in 
the view in which subjects were placed by him, something 
like the day-light, that simple clearness which makes things 
conspicuous and does not make them glare, which adds no 
colour or form, but purely makes visible in perfection the real 
colour and form of all things round ; a kind of light less amus- 
ing than that of magnificent lustres or a thousand coloured 
lamps, and less fascinating and romantic than that of the 
moon, but which is immeasurably preferred when we are bent 
on sober business, and not at leisure, or not in the disposition, 
to wander delighted among beautiful shadows and delusions. 
It is needless to say that Fox possessed, in a high degree, wit 
and fancy ; but superlative intellect was the grand distinction 
of his eloquence ; the pure force of sense, of plain downright 
sense, was so great that it would have given a character of 
sublimity to his eloquence, even if it had never once been 
aided by a happy image or a brilliant explosion. The gran- 
deur of plain sense, would not have been deemed an absurd 
phrase, by any man who had heard one of Fox's best speeches. 
And as to the moral features of the character, all who knew 
him concur in ascribing to him a candour, a good nature, sim- 
plicity of manners, and an energy of feeling, which made him 
no less interesting as a friend, and might have made him no less 
noble as a philanthropist, than he was admirable as a senator. 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 115 

We have very often surrendered our imagination to tiie in- 
teresting, but useless and painful employment, of tracing out 
the career which might have been run by a man thus pre- 
eminently endowed. We have imagined him first rising up, 
through a youth of unrivalled promise, to the period of matu- 
rity, unstained by libertinism, scorning to think for one mo- 
ment of a competition with the heroes of Bond-street, or any 
other class of the minions of fashion, and maintaining the 
highest moi*al principles in contempt of the profligacy which 
pressed close around him. It is an unfortimate state of mind 
in any reader of these pages, whose risibility is excited when 
we add to the sketch that solemn reverence for the Deitj^ and 
expectation of a future judgment, without which it is a pure 
matter of fact that there is no such thing on eaith as an in- 
vincible and universal virtue. Instead of unbounded licen- 
tiousness, our imaginary young statesman has shown his con- 
tempt of parsimony, by the most generous modes of expense 
which humanity could suggest, and his regard for the softer 
sex, by appropriating one of the best and most interesting of 
them in the fidelity of the tenderest relation. We have ima- 
gined him employing the time which other young men of rank 
and spirit gave to dissipation, in a strenuous prosecution of 
moral and political studies ; and yet mingling so far with men 
of various classes, as to know mtunately of what materials 
society and governments are composed. We have imagined 
him as presenting himself at length on the public scene, with 
an air and a step analogous and rival to the aspect and sinew 
of the most powerful combatant that ever entered the field of 
Olympia.. 

At thfs entrance on public action, we have viewed him 
solemnly determining to make absolute principle the sole rule 
of his conduct in every instance, to the last sentence he should 
speak or write on public affairs ; to give no pledges, and 
make no concessions, to any party whatever; to expose and 
prosecute, with the same unrelenting justice, the generally 
equal corruption of ministries and oppositions ; to co-operate 
with any party in the particular case in which he should judge 
it in the right, and in all other cases to protest impartially 
against them all ; and to say the whole truth, when other 
pretended friends of public virtue and the people durst only to 
say the half, for fear of provoking an examination of their own 
conduct, or for fear of absolutely shutting the door against all 



116 

chance of future advancement. We view him holding up to 
contempt the artifices and intrigues of statesmen, and hated 
abundantly for his pains, no doubt, but never in danger of a 
retaliation of exposure. He would not have submitted to be 
found in the society of even the very highest persons in the 
state, on any other terms of intercourse than those of virtue 
and wisdom ; he would have felt it a duty peculiarly sacred 
and cogent to make his most animated efforts to counteract 
any corruption which he might perceive finding its way into 
such society, and if those efibrts failed, to withdraw himself so 
entirely as to be clear of all shadow of responsibility. Virtue 
of this quality would be in little hazard of afflicting any govern- 
ment with a violent impatience to have the man for a coadju- 
tor, and therefore our imagination never placed him oftener 
or longer in any of the high offices of state, than about such 
a space as Fox was actually so privileged ; indeed, a consid- 
erably shorter time ; for even had it been possible that any set 
of men would have acceded at first to such conditions of coa- 
lition as he would have insisted on, there could hardly have 
failed to arise, in the course of a month or two, some question 
on which this high and inflexible virtue must have dissented 
so totally, and opposed so strenuously, as to have necessitated, 
on the one part or the other, a relinquishment of office ; and 
it could not be doubtful one instant on which part this sur- 
render must take place, when the alternative lay between a 
man of pure virtue and the ordinary tribe of statesmen. But 
office would not have been requisite to the influence of such 
a heroic and eloquent patriot. Our imagination has repre- 
sented him as not only maintaining, in the public council of 
the nation, the cause of justice in all its parts, sometimes 
with the support of other men of talents, and sometimes with- 
out it, but also as a feeling that his public duty extended much 
beyond all the efforts he could make in that place. As it is 
absurd to expect integrity in a government, while the people 
are too ignorant or too inattentive to form any right judgment 
of its proceedings, and as no person in the whole country 
would have been so qualified to present before it simple and 
comprehensive illustrations of its situation and interests, or 
would indeed have been a tenth part so much attended to, we 
have imagined him publishing from time to time instructions 
to the people, in the form of large tracts, stating, with all his 
unequalled clearness and comprehension, the duties of the 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 117 

people with respect to the conduct of government, and the na- 
ture and tendency of the important questions and measures of 
the times, with an anxious and reiterated effort to impart just 
views on the general topics of political science, such as the 
rights of the people, the foundation of the authority of govern- 
ments, the principles of taxation, and peace and war. If 
these great duties allowed any time for the more formal 
schemes of literary performance, he might have taken up 
some period of the English or any other history, which af- 
forded the best occasions for illustrating the most interesting 
points of political truth, and forming a set of permanent nation- 
al lessons. But we could almost have regretted to see him 
so engaged, since very often the ascertaining of some very 
inconsiderable fact, or the unravelling of some perplexity, 
which, though of consequence possibly to the completeness of 
the history, is not of the smallest importance to its use, must 
have consumed the labour and time which might have pro- 
duced a powerful illustration of some subject immediately mo- 
mentous to the public welfare, and prevented more mischief 
than all histories of England ever did good. 

During this whole career, the favourite of our imagination 
keeps far aloof from all personal turpitude ; and Howard was 
just as capable of insulting misery, or John de Witte of carry- 
ing on a paltry intrigue, or Eustace St. Pierre of betraying 
his fellow-citizens, as our statesman of mingling with the 
basest refuse of human nature at Newmarket and the gam- 
bling house, not to mention houses of any other description. 
We should have suspected ourselves of some feverish dream 
or transient delirium, if our fancy had ever dared so mon- 
strous a representation, as that of the eloquence which could 
fascinate and enlighten every tender and every intelligent 
friend, and influence senates whose decrees would influence 
the destinies of the world, expending itself in discussions with 
jockies, and debates with black-legs ; of the intellect which 
could hold the balance of national contests, or devise schemes 
for the benefit of all mankind, racked with calculations on 
dice and cards ; of the vehement accuser of public prodigality 
transferring thousands upon thousands, at the cast of these 
dice and cards, to wretches who deserve to be cauterized out 
of the body politic, without making, at the same time, any 
very careful inquiry, whether the claims of all his industrious 
tradesmen had been satisfied. If the virtue of other states- 
6* 



men and patriots was found melting away in the arms of 
wantons, or suffocated with the fumes of wine, OT reduced to 
that last consummation of dishonour, a subscription of friends 
to repair a fortune dissipated in the most ignoble uses, our 
patriot would have been incensed that such men should pre- 
sume to make speeches against corruption, and profane the 
name of public virtue. 

If, in pursuing his career to a conclusion, we placed him 
in office towards the close of his life, we beheld him most 
earnest, we will say devoutly earnest, to render the last part 
of his course more useful than all that had preceded, by a 
bold application of those principles which he had maintained 
through life, to the purposes in which alone they can be of 
any use, the practical schemes of reform ; and if he found it 
impossible to effect, or even to propose, those reforms he had 
so many thousand times averred to be essential to the safety 
of the state, indignantly abandoning, before death summoned 
him, all concern in political office, with an honest, and public, 
and very loud declaration, of its incurable corruption. In vir- 
tue of the privilege belonging to all creators of fictitious per- 
sonages, we should certainly have invoked death to a prema- 
ture removal of our favourite, if we could have fancied the re- 
motest possibility that he might, in the last, and what ought 
to be the most illustrious period of his life, sink into the silent 
witness of aggravated and rapidly progressive corruptions, the 
approver of oppressive taxes on people of slender means, and 
the eloquent defender of sinecures held by lords. But we 
could not suffer the thought, that the personage whose course 
we had followed through every triumph of virtue, could at last, 
for the sake of a few sickly months of office, deny his degrad- 
ed country the consolation of being able to cite, after he was 
gone, the name of one consistent and unconquerable patriot 
at least, in contrast to the legion of domestic spoilers and be- 
trayers ; or refuse himself the laurels which were ready to be 
conferred on him by the hand of death : no, we beheld him 
retaining to the last stage, the same decisive rectitude which 
ennobled all the preceding ; and after humbly committing 
to the Divine mercy, in the prospect of soon removing to a 
state for which no tumults of public life had ever been suffered 
to interrupt his anxious preparation, realizing what the poet 
predicted of a former statesman, 

" ' Oh, save my country, Heaven I ' shall be thy last." 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 119 

How pensive has been the sentiment with which we have 
said, all this is no more than what Fox might have been : 
nor has this feeling been in the least beguiled by the splen- 
dour of all the eulogiums, by the fragrance of all the incense, 
conferred and offered since his death. His name stands con- 
spicuous on the list of those, who have failed to accomplish 
the commission on which their wonderful endowments would 
seem to tell that they had been sent to the world, by the 
Master of human and all other spirits. It is thus that man- 
kind are doomed to see a succession of individuals rising 
among them, with capacities for rendering them the most in- 
estimable services, but faithless, for the most part, to their 
high vocation, and either never attempting the generous la- 
bours which invite their talents, or combining with these la- 
bours the vices which frustrate their efficacy. Our late distin- 
guished statesman's exertions for the public welfare were 
really so great, and in many instances, we have no doubt, so 
well intended, that it is peculiarly painful to behold him de- 
frauding such admirable powers and efforts of their eflect, by 
means of those parts of his conduct in which he sunk to a 
level with the least respectable of mankind ; and we think 
no man within our memory has given so melancholy an ex- 
ample of this self-counteraction. It is impossible for the 
friends of our constitution and of human nature not to feel a 
warm admiration for Fox's exertions, whatever their partial 
motives and whatever their occasional excesses might be, in 
vindication of the great principles of liberty, in hostility to the 
rage for war, and in extirpation of the slave-trade. This last 
abomination, which had gradually lost, even on the basest part 
of the nation, that hold which it had for a while maintained by 
a delusive notion of policy, and was fast sinking under the 
hatred of ail that could pretend to humanity or decency, was 
destined ultimately to fall by his hand, at a period so nearly 
contemporary with the end of his career, as to give the re- 
membrance of his death somewhat of a similar advantage of 
association to that, by which the death of the Hebrew cham- 
pion is always recollected in connexion with the fall of Da- 
gon's temple. A great object was accomplished, and it is 
fair to attribute the event, in no small degree, to his perse- 
vering support of that most estimable individual who was the 
leader of the design : but as to his immense display of talent 
on the wide ground of general politics, on the theory of true 



120 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

freedom, and popular rights ; on the great and increasing in- 
fluence of the crown ; on the corruption and reform of public 
institutions ; on severe investigation of public expenditure ; 
on the national vigilance proper to be exercised over the con- 
duct of government ; and on the right of any nation to change, 
when it judges necessary, both the persons and the form of 
its government ; we have observed wdth the deepest mortifica- 
tion, times without number, the very slight and transient effect 
on the public mind of a more argumentative and luminous 
eloquence, than probably M^e are ever again to see irradiating 
those subjects, and urging their importance. Both principles 
and practices, tending toward arbitrary power and national 
degradation, were progressively gaining ground during the 
much greater part of the time that he was assaulting them 
with fire and sword ; and the people, notwithstanding it was 
their own cause that he was maintaining by this persevering 
w arfare, though they Avere amused indeed with his exploits, 
could hardly be induced to regard him otherwise than as a 
capital prize-fighter, and scarcely thanked him for the forti- 
tude and energy which he devoted to their service. He w^as 
allowed to be a most admirable man for a leader of opposi- 
tion, but not a mortal could be persuaded to regard that oppo- 
sition, even in his hands, as bearing any resemblance to that 
which we have been accustomed to ascribe to Cato, an op- 
position of which pure virtue was the motive, and all corrup- 
tions whatever the object. If the very same things which 
were said by Fox, had been advanced by the person whose 
imaginary character we have sketched in the preceding 
pages, they would have become the oracles of the people from 
Berwick to Land's End ; corrupters and intriguers would have 
felt an impression of awe when he rose to speak; no political 
doctors or nostrums could have cured their nerves of a strange 
vibration at the sound of his words, a vibration very apt to 
reach into their consciences or their fears ; there would have 
been something mysterious and appalling in his voice, a 
sound as if a multitude of voices articulated in one ; and 
though his countenance should have looked as candid and 
friendly as Fox's did, these gentlemen would have been some- 
times subject to certain fretful peevish lapses of imagination 
much like those in which Macbeth saw the apparition of 
Banquo, and would have involuntarily apostrophised him as 
the dreaded agent of detection and retribution. They would 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 121 

have felt themselves in the presence of their master, for they 
would have been taught to recognise, in this one man, the 
most real representative of the people, whose will would gen- 
erally be soon declared as substantially identical with his 
opinions. 

How then did it come to pass, that Fox had no such in- 
fluence on the national mind, or on the government ? The 
answer is perfectly obvious, and it forms a very serious ad- 
monition to all patriots who really wish to promote the wel- 
fare of the people, by an opposition to corruptions of the state. 
The talents, and the long and animated exertions, of the most 
eloquent of all our countrymen failed, plainly because the 
people placed no confidence in his virtue ; or in other words, 
because they would never be persuaded to attribute virtue to 
his character. 

A signal notoriety of dissipation accompanied the outset 
of his public career. While the political party which he op- 
posed might be very reasonably astonished that the engage- 
ments of the turf, of the bagnio, and of the sanctuaries dedi- 
cated to the enshrined and associated imps of chance and 
fraud, should seem to divert no part of the energy with which 
they were attacked in their quarters at St. Stephen's, and 
while the tribes of bloods, bucks, rakes, and other worthy de- 
nominations and fraternities might be proud to have for their 
leader a genius, who could at the same time beat so many 
gray-beards of the state on their own ground, the sober part of 
the nation deplored or despised, according to the more gener- 
ous or more cynical character of the individuals, the splendid 
talent which could degrade itself to so much folly and immo- 
rality. Too great a share of the same fatal reputation attend- 
ed the distinguished statesman, with whatever truth, during 
the much greater part of his life. We say, with whatever 
truth ; for we know no more of his private history than what 
has been without contradiction circulated in the talk and the 
printed chronicles of scandal ; with exaggerations and fic- 
tions, no doubt ; but no public man can have such a reputa- 
tion without having substantially such a character. And by 
a law, as deep in human nature as any of its principles of 
distinction between good and evil, it is impossible to give re- 
spect or confidence to a man who habitually disregards some 
of the primary ordinances of morality. The nation never 
confided in our eloquent statesman's integrity ; those who ad- 



122 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

mired every thing in his talents, and much in his qualities, re- 
gretted that his name never ceased to excite in their minds the 
idea of gamesters and bacchanals, even after he was acknow- 
ledged to have withdrawn himself from such society. Those 
who held his opinions, were almost sorry that he should have 
held them, while they saw with what malicious exultation 
they who rejected them could cite his moral reputation, in 
place of argument, to invalidate them. In describing this un- 
fortunate effect of the character, we are simply asserting known 
matter of fact. There is not one advocate of the principles 
or of the man, who has not to confess what irksome and si- 
lencing rebuffs he has experienced in the form of reference 
to moral character ; we have observed it continually for many 
years, in every part of England which we have frequented ; 
and we have seen practical and most palpable proof, that no 
man, even of the highest talents, can ever acquire, or at least 
retain, much influence on the public mind in the character of 
remonstrant and reformer, without the reality, or at any rate 
the invulnerable reputation, of virtue, in the comprehensive 
sense of the word, as comprising every kind of morality pre- 
scribed by the highest moral code acknowledged in a Chris- 
tian nation. Public men and oppositionists may inveigh 
against abuses, and parade in patriotism, as long as they 
please ; they will find that even one manifest vice will pre- 
clude all public confidence in their principles, and therefore 
render futile the strongest exertions of talent ; a slight flaw, 
in otherwise the best tempered blade of Toledo, will soon ex- 
pose the baflled wight that wields it to either the scorn or pity 
of the spectators, and to the victorious arm of his antagonist. 
It has possibly been said, that a man may maintain nice prin- 
ciples of integrity in the prosecution of public affairs, though 
his conscience and practice are very defective in matters of 
private morality. But this would never be believed, even if 
it were true : the universal conviction of mankind rejects it 
when it is attempted, in practical cases, to be made the foun- 
dation of confidence. So far is this from being believed, that 
even a conspicuous and complete reformation of private morals, 
if it be but recent, is still an unsatisfactory security for public 
virtue ; and a very long probation of personal character is in- 
dispensable, as a kind of quarantine for a man once deeply 
contaminated to undergo, in order to engage any real confi- 
dence in the integrity of his public conduct ; nor can he ever 



fox's JA3IES THE SECOND. 123 

engage it in the same degree, as if a uniform and resolute 
virtue had marked his private conduct from the Ijcginning. 
But even if it were admitted, that all the virtues of the states- 
man might flourish in spite of the vices of the man, it would 
have been of no use, as an argument for confidence in the 
integrity of Fox's principles as a statesman, after the indelible 
stigma which they received in the famous coalition with Lord 
North. In what degree that portion of the people, that ap- 
proved Fox's political opinions, really confided in his integrity 
as a firm and consistent statesman, was strongly brought to 
the proof, at the time of his appointment as one of the princi- 
pals of the late administration. His admirers in general ex- 
pressed their expectations in terms of great reserve ; they 
rather wished, then absolutely dared, to believe, that it was 
impossible he should not prefer a fidelity to those great prin- 
ciples and plans of extensive reform, which he had so strenu- 
ously inculcated, to any office or associates in office that 
should require the sacrifice of those plans, and that he would 
not surely have taken a high official station, without some 
stipulations for carrying them, at least partially, into effect. 
But they recollected the tenour of his life ; and though they 
were somewhat disappointed, and deeply grieved, to find him 
at his very entrance on office proposing and defending one of 
the rankest abuses, and afterwards inviolably keeping the 
peace with the grand total of abuses, in both the domestic 
and the Indian government, they did, at least many of them, 
confess, that they had always trembled for the consequence 
of bringing to such an ordeal a political integrity which, while 
they had sometimes for a moment almost half believed in it, 
they had always been obliged to refer to some far different 
principle from a firm personal morality, supported by a reli- 
gious conscience. 

We have remarked on the slight hold which our great orator 
had on the mind of the nation at large ; it was mortifying also 
to observe, how little ascendancy his prodigious powers main- 
tained over the minds of senators and ministers. It was irk- 
some to witness that air of easy indifference, with which his 
most poignaiit reproaches were listened to ; that readiness of 
reply to his nervous representations of the calamities or in- 
justice of war ; the carelessness often manifested while he was 
depicting the distresses of the people : and the impudent gayety 
and sprightliness with which arrant corruption could show, 



124 

and defend, and applaud itself in his presence. It is not for 
us to pretend to judge of what materials ministers and sena- 
tors are composed ; but we did often think, that if eloquence 
of such intensity, and so directed, had been corroborated in 
its impetus by the authoritative force which severe virtue can 
give to the stroke of talent, some of them would have been re- 
pressed into a very diflerent kind of feeling and manners from 
those which we had the mortification to behold : we did think 
that, a man thus armed at once with the spear and the aegis, 
might have caused it to be felt, by stress of dire compulsion, 
" How awful goodness is." 

On the whole, we shall always regard Fox as a memorable 
and mournful example of a gigantic agent, at once determined 
to labour for the public, and dooming himself to labour almost 
in vain. Our estimate of his talents precludes all hope or fear 
of any second example of such pow^erful labours, or such 
humiliating failure of effect. We wish the greatest genius on 
earth, whoever he may be, might write an inscription for our 
eminent statesman's monument, to express, in the most strenu- 
ous of all possible modes of thought and phrase, the truth and 
the warning, that no man will ever be accepted to serve man- 
kind in the highest departments of utility, without an eminence 
of virtue that can sustain him in the noble defiance, Which of 
you convict's me of sin ? 

We can see that a good life of Fox will never be given to 
the public. If his biography is written by any of his intimate 
friends, who alone possess competent materials, they will sup- 
press, and may even be excused on the ground of affection 
and propriety for suppressing, many things which are of the 
very vitality of the character. The historian of such a man 
ought to be at once knowing, philosophical, and impressed 
with the principles of religion ; and it may easily be guessed 
whether such a writer is likely to be found, or likely, if he 
were found, to be put in possession of all the requisite infor- 
mation. We must notice a sentence in Lord Holland's pre- 
face. (P. xlv.) 

" It is true, that at the melancholy period of his death, advantage was 
taken of the interest excited by all that concerned him, Jo impose upon 
the public a variety of memoirs and anecdotes (in the form of pamphlets,) 
as unfounded in fact, as they were painful to his friends and mjurious to 
his memo! y. The confident pretensions with which many of those pub- 
lications were ushered into the world, may have given them some little 
circulation at the time, but the internal evidence of their falsehood was 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 125 

sufRciently strong to counteract any impression which their contents 
might be calculated to pmduce. It is not therefore with a view of ex- 
posing such misrepresentation, that any authentic account of the hfe of 
Mr. Fox can be deemed necessary." 

His Lordship is quite mistaken. These publications have 
produced a permanent effect on the generality of their readers. 
They may not indeed implicitly believe every particular these 
pamphlets contain, but there is not one reader in twenty that 
doubts of their being mainly true. How should the case be 
otherwise ? Persons remote from the sphere of Mr. Fox's ac- 
quaintance, can detect no internal evidence of falsehood. They 
have all heard anecdotes, which they have never heard con- 
tradicted, of his earlier habits, adventures, companions^ and 
places of resort; and when they are furnished with a large 
addition of what seems to them quite of a piece with what they 
have heard or read before, how are they to perceive any in- 
ternal evidence of falsehood ? or who can blame them for be- 
lieving straight forward, if there be no contradiction between 
one part of the production they are reading and another, and 
no material contradiction between the several productions 
they happen to meet with ? The substance of these pam- 
phlets is so settled in the minds of the great majority of their 
readers, as the true history and character of Mr. Fox, that a 
formal work from one of his friends would have no small dif- 
ficulty in displacing the belief. They will judge, however, 
whether they ought not to attempt it, and whether justice to 
him be not a superior consideration to any points of delicacy 
relating to his surviving associates or opponents in political 
concerns. 

"Telling the story of those times," was Mr. Fox's descrip- 
tion of history. But if we try, by a strong effort of imagina- 
tion, to carry ourselves back to any given period of past times, 
and if we take back along with us the history which professes 
to tell the story, it will be striking to consider how little it is in 
the power of history to perform. Let our own country be the 
scene, and any past age the time. That country at the time, 
perhaps, contained seven or eight millions of human beings. 
Each one of these had his emplo^-ments, interests, and schemes, 
his pleasures and sufferings, his accidents and adventures, his 
youth and the changes of advancing life ; and these pleasura- 
ble and painful interests had an infinite importance to the indi- 
vidual whose thoughts they filled, and whose heart they elated 



126 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

or afflicted. Of this immense crowd, and all their distinct, 
their anxious, and, in their own view, eventful courses of life, 
history knows nothing. Incalculable thousands, therefore, 
and tens of thousands, of emotions of joy and agony, of ardent 
hopes, of romantic schemes, of interesting disclosures, of 
striking dialogues, of strange incidents, of deep-laid plots, of 
fatal catastrophes, of scenes of death, that have had their place 
and their hour, that have been to certain human creatures the 
most important circumstances in the world at the tune, and 
collectively have constituted the real state of the people, could 
not be saved, and cannot be redeemed, from sinking in ob- 
livion. This vast crowd of beings have lived in the social and 
yet separating economy of families, and thus have been under 
an infinite number of distinct polities, each of which have ex- 
perienced innumerable fluctuations, as to agreement or dis- 
cord, as to resources, number, cultivation, relative sorrows or 
satisfactions, and intercourse, alliances or quarrels, with the 
neighbouring little domestic states. All this, too, though con- 
stituting at all times so great a part of the moral condition of 
the good and evil of the community, is incapable of being 
brought Avithin the cognizance of history. There are larger 
subdivisions of the nation, yet still so small as to be very nu- 
merous, into the inhabitants of villages and towns, with all the 
local interests and events of each ; and even these are for the 
most part invisible in the narrow sketch of the history of a 
nation. We may add all the train of events and interests con- 
nected with religious associations, with the different employ- 
ments of the people, with civil and literary professions, and 
with all the departments of studious life, together with the 
lighter, but both characteristic and influential course of amuse- 
ments and fashions. 

No one ever wished to see the world so literally filled with 
books as to leave no room for the grass and corn to grow, nor 
therefore regretted that a host of writers of superhuman know- 
ledge and facility had not been appointed to record all the 
things interesting to individuals, or families, or districts, that 
have been done or said in a whole nation during centuries ; 
but it is at the same time to be acknowledged, that nothing 
really deserving to be called a history of a nation can be writ- 
ten, unless a historian could exhibit something that should be 
a true and correct miniature of what has thus been an almost 
boundless assemblage of moral being and agency. He must, 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 127 

in description, reduce this vast assemblage of particulars to 
some general abstract, which shall give the true measures of 
all the kinds of good and evil that have existed in a whole na- 
tion at the assigned period ; and he must contrive some mode 
of narration that shall relate, as one course of action, the whole 
agency of millions of separate, and diversified, and often mutu- 
ally-opposing agents. But how is all this to be done ? The 
historian does not know a ten-thousandth part of all those facts 
of good and evil among individuals, the collective amount of 
which formed the moral character and condition of any people 
during any given period, and which collective amount he is 
required to ascertain as he proceeds, and to give in a con- 
tinued abstract ; nor, indeed, if he could know so vast an 
assemblage, would it be possible for him so to combine and 
compare all these things together, as to make any true ab- 
stract and estimate of the whole ; nor if he could make such a 
summary estimate, would it be of any material value, as thus 
divested of all particular appropriation to individuals, and given 
as the description of the character and state of an imaginary 
being called a nation. A nation having one character and 
condition, and acting as one being, is but an idle fiction after 
all ; since in plain sense it is as individuals that men are good 
or evil, are happy or miserable, and are engaged in an infinite 
diversity of action, and not as constituent particles of some 
multitudinous monster. 

What is it, then, that a work professing to be the history of 
a nation actually does ] What it does is precisely this ; it 
devotes itself to a dozen or two of the most distinguished 
persons of the times of which it professes to relate the story; 
and because the stations and actions of those persons much 
affected the state and affairs of the nation, frequent notice is 
taken of the people in the way of illustrating the conduct of 
those principal persons. The natural order would seem to 
be, that the people, consisting of so many millions of living 
and rational beings, should form throughout the grand object ; 
and that the actions of these leading individuals, who by the 
very nature of the case will occupy, after the historian's best 
efforts to reduce their fictitious importance, a very dispropor- 
tionate share of attention, should be narrated as tending to ex- 
plain, and for the purpose of explaining, the state of the nation, 
and the changes in its character and affairs. It might be pre- 
sumed, that the happiness or calamities, the civilization or 



128 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

barbarism, the tranquillity or commotions, of a large as- 
sembled portion of the human race, is a much more consider- 
able object of interest than the mere names, characters, and 
proceedings, of about as many men as might be conveyed in 
a common stage -wagon ; and that the writer, who is making 
records of that nation, should be much more anxious, both to 
illustrate whatever in its condition and qualities was quite in- 
dependent of these chief persons, and to elucidate the efi'ect, 
on the popular condition, of the actions of these persons, than 
just to relate that these particular persons acted in that par- 
ticular manner, and then call this a history of the nation. But 
this latter is obviously the mode in almost all the works pro- 
fessing to be national histories. Throughout the work the 
nation appears as a large mass of material, which a very few 
persons in succession have inherited, or bought, or stolen, and 
on which they. have amused themselves with all manner of 
experiments. Some of them have chosen to cast it into one 
kind of polity, and others into another ; and sometimes rival 
proprietors have quarrelled about it, and between them dashed 
and battered it out of every regular form, wasting and destroy- 
ing it, as men will often do in quarrelling about what each of 
them professes to deem very valuable, by tossing large pieces 
of it at each other's heads. And all the while the relator of 
the fray views this material in no other light, than that of the 
question which of the two has the most right to it, and which 
of them shows the most strength, dexterity, or determination, 
in employing it in the battle. If it is at one time moulded into 
a fair and majestic form, it is regarded purely as showing the 
hand of the artist ; if at the next turn it is again reduced to a 
mass, and thrown into some loathsome shape, it is no further 
a matter of concern than to marvel at the strange taste of the 
sovereign political potter. In plain terms, history takes no 
further account of the great mass of a nation or of mankind, 
than as a mere appendage to a few individuals, and serving 
them in the capacity of a mechanical implement for labour, the 
passive subject of experiments in legislation, the deluded par- 
tisan of faction, and the general's disposable, that is, con- 
sumable force for war. The story of this great mass is briefly 
told, not for its own sake, but merely as a part of the story of 
the chiefs, and in a manner which indicates, that the interests 
of the million were quite of secondary account, in the his- 
torian's view, to those of the individual. The histories of na- 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 129 

tlons, therefore, are not what they pretend, and are commonly 
taken to be : history pretends to be the same thing to the 
time of a nation, that geography is to the local space that it 
inhabits ; but a traveller that has just gone along a few of the 
great roads of a country, and visited its chief to Avns, might just 
as properly call a sketch and a map of this journey a geogra- 
phical survey of the country, as any of our national histories 
can pretend to be a satisfactory view of the state of a people 
through a course of ages. 

It may indeed be alleged, that the grand defect in question 
is in a great degree the inevitable misfortune of history, from 
the very nature of things, which makes it impossible for the 
historian to do more than record the actions of a few con- 
spicuous men. We acknowledge this to be partly true ; and 
have only to observe that history therefore, from the narrowness 
of its scope, is of vastly less value as a revealer of human na- 
ture, and a teacher of moral principles, than it has been com- 
monly and pompously represented to be. Exclusive of mere 
facts, the only truths that history peculiarly illustrates are few 
and obvious. It were needless to mention the most conspi- 
cuous of its demonstrations, the stupendous depravity of our 
nature ; the whole of the interesting fragment before us, for 
instance, contains absolutely nothing but an account of follies 
and crimes, except indeed the heroic conduct of some persons 
who perished for opposing them. The more specific truths 
illustrated appear to be these : the invariable tendency of 
governments to become despotic, the universal disposition of 
nations to allow them to become so, the extreme hazard to 
liberty when sought by revolutions effected by arms ; and the 
infinite mischief of religious intolerance, and of all such 
measures of the state as naturally tend to create it, and give 
it an organized force and operation. 

A rigid adherence to Mr. Fox's theory (it is not so much 
his practice) of historical composition, would still more con- 
tract its scope and diminish its value. Lord Holland has ex- 
plained this theory. 

*' It is indeed probable, that his difficulties on this occasion were 
grreater than any other modern historian would have had to encounter. 
I have mentioned them more particularly, because they in some measure 
arose from his scrupul-ms attention to certain notions he entertained on 
the nature of a historical composition. If indeed the work were 
finished, the nature of his design would be best collected from the execu- 
tion of it ; but as it is unfortunately in an incomplete and unfinished state, 



180 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

his conception of the duties of a historian may very possibly be mis- 
understood. The consequence would be, that some passages, which, 
according to modern taste, must be called peculiarities, might, with su- 
perficial critics, pass for defects which he had overlooked, or imperfections 
which he intended to correct. It is therefore necessary to observe, that 
he had formed his plan so exclusively on the model of ancient writers, 
that he not only felt some repugnance to the modern practice of notes, 
but he thought that all which a historian wished to say, should be intro- 
duced as part of a continued narration, and never assume the appearance 
of a digression, much less of a dissertation annexed to it. From the period 
therefore that he closed his introductory chapter, he defined his duty as an 
author to consist in recounting the facts as they arose, or in his simple and 
forcible language, in telling the story of those times. A conversation 
which passed on the subject of the literature of the age of James the 
Second proves his rigid adherence to these ideas, and perhaps the sub- 
stance of it may serve to illustrate and explain them. In speaking of the 
writers of that period, he lamented that he had not devised a method of 
interweaving any account of them or their works, much less any criticism 
on their style, into his history. On my suggesting the example of Hume 
and Voltaire, who had discussed such topics at some length, either at the 
end of each reign, or in a separate chapter, he observed, with much com- 
mendation of the execution of it, that such a contrivance might be a good 
mode of writing critical essays, but that it was in his opinion incompatible 
with the nature of his undertaking, which, if it ceased to be a narration, 
ceased to be a history. Such restraints assuredly operated as taxes upon 
his ingenuity, and added to that labour, which the observance of his 
general laws of composition rendered sufficiently great. On the rules of 
writing he had reflected much and deeply, Mis own habits naturally led 
him to compare them with those of public speaking, and the different and 
even opposite principles upon which excellence is to be attained in these 
two great arts, were no unusual topics of his conversation," — Preface, 
pp. 35—38. 

The obvious question here is, how history could ever come 
to have such a specific nature. According to this representa- 
tion, history might be a thing as defined as a species of ani- 
mal or vegetable, which must absolutely have always a cer- 
tain number of precise attributes, and could not have more or 
less without becoming a monster. But by what sovereign 
authority was its organization thus definitively fixed, and where 
are we to look for its pure original type ? And even if there 
were such an original definition and type, and if according to 
that authority nothing but a continuous narration should be en- 
titled to the denomination of history ; of what trifling con- 
sequence it would be that this name should be refused to a 
work that luminously narrated events, that made intervals in 
this narration, and filled them with eloquent appropriate re- 
flections and profound reasonings, adapted to make the narra- 



131 

tion of facts both more striking and more instructive. The 
■writer of such a work might say, I do not care whether you 
allow my work to be called a history or not ; even keep the 
insignificant term, if you will, sacred to the dry narrator, Avho 
has not understanding enough to make important reflections 
as he goes on ; if it is on account of the eloquence and reason- 
ing in my work that the name of history is denied it, I have 
only to say, that I have then written something better than 
history. 

History, as an art, is no more bound up by technical and 
exclusive laws than oratory or poetry. It is just any mode of 
narration in which any man chooses to relate to other men a 
series of facts. It may be wTitten as a mere chronicle, or in 
a continuous and artfully-arranged relation without reflections, 
or in a narration moderately interspersed with short obser- 
vations, which cause but a momentary interruption of the 
story, or in a form admitting such frequent and large disser- 
tations, as to become, in some sense, a course of historical 
lectures. These various methods of bringing back the past 
to view, are adapted to the various kinds of inquisitiveness 
with which men seek a knowledge of the past. A few may 
be content with a bare knowledge that certain things hap- 
pened at certain times : many wish to have the events ad- 
justed into an order which shall exhibit their connexion from 
the beginning to the end ; some wish to comprehend the 
causes and tendencies of events, as well as to be apprised of 
any remarkable contemporary circumstances, or distinguished 
men, that without being directly involved in the train of 
events, had any relation with any stage of them ; and a few 
are even desirous of formal deductions of moral and political 
doctrines. Excepting perhaps the first of these modes, it 
would be idle exclusively to appropriate or refuse the de- 
nomination of history to any one of them ; and especially to 
refuse the title, if it is deemed a title of dignified import, to 
such a mode of recording the events of past ages as should 
tend to explain the causes and various relations, and to en- 
force Avhatever important instructions they are capable of 
being made to yield to the readers ; for surely the highest 
office that history can pretend to execute, is that of raising 
on ages of the dead a tribute of instruction for the living. 
We have already said that the wisdom derivable from history 
is not very copious ; but as far as may be, it should seem to 



132 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

be the business of history, to collect all the little streams of 
valuable instruction in the distant regions of time (as the rills 
and rivulets among the remote mountains of Africa are drawn 
by successive confluence to form the Nile,) and bring them 
down in one fertilizing current on the lower ages. 

To say that the ancient historians confined themselves to a 
straight forward unbroken course of narration, is just the 
same thing, with respect to its authority in directing our 
practice, as to say they built their houses, or shaped their 
clothes, in this or that particular way ; we have always an 
appeal to the nature and reason of the thing. And we have 
also an appeal to universal colloquial practice, which may be 
assumed to be substantially the model for all communications 
that are to be made from one human being to another by 
written words. If a man were relating to us any interesting 
train of actions or events, of which he had been a witness, or 
had received his information from witnesses, we should ex- 
pect him often to interrupt his narration with explanatory re- 
marks at least ; and if he were a very intelligent man, we 
should be delighted to hear him make observations, tending to 
establish important general truths from the facts related. We 
should positively compel him to do something of this ; for we 
should just as much think of giving the lie to all he said, as 
of suffering him to go on an hour without raising some ques- 
tions, both of fact and of general speculation. And we do not 
comprehend how written history can be under any law, un- 
less some dictum of pedantry, to forbid it to imitate, in a mo- 
derate degree, what is so natural and so rational in a narration 
made personally by a judicious man to intelligent com- 
panions. 

Beside the information of the distinguished statesman's 
opinions on historical composition, the preface contains va- 
rious interesting particulars of his habits and studies. It ap- 
pears that his feelings were so far from being totally absorbed 
by ambition, that his mental resources were so great, and his 
susceptibility of interest so lively and versatile, that in the in- 
tervals of his most vehement public exertions, and during the 
season in which he seceded in a great measure from the 
political warfare, he enjoyed exquisitely the pleasures of 
elegant literature and rural nature. It is no less pleasing than 
it is unusual and wonderful, to see the simple and cordial feel- 
ings of the human being, and the taste of the man of letters. 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 133 

thus preserving their existence amidst the artificial interests 
and the tumults of a statesman's life, and unfolding themselves 
with energy in every season of retreat from the political 
sphere. With a true philanthropist, however, it will be a 
question of conscience, how far he may innocently surrender 
himself even to the refined gratifications of imagination and 
taste, while sensible that very important interests may be de- 
pending on his more or less continued prosecution of the 
rougher exercises of political argument. There is no pre- 
serving patience, to hear a man like Mr. Fox, and in such a 
period as that he lived in, talk of employing himself in pre- 
paring an edition of Dryden's works ; an occupation in which 
he might consume, in settling the propriety of some couple of 
poetical epithets, just as much time as would have sufficed for 
preparing the outlines of a speech on the subject of parlia- 
mentary reform. It would be a fine thing indeed, to see the 
great statesman solemnly weighing the merits of the mean- 
ing of some awkward line, which the poet perhaps WTote half 
asleep, when driven to finish the "tale" of verses which some 
Pharaoh of a bookseller had two or three times sent his imps 
to demand, for money paid, and perhaps spent in the wine that 
had imparted the cast of somnolency to the verse in question. 
Nor is it solely on the ground of his possible public useful- 
ness, that we feel some want of complacency in hearing him 
exclaim, " Oh how I wish that I could make up my mind to 
think it right, to devote all the remaining part of my life to 
such subjects, and such only!" It will suggest itself that 
toward the close of his life, there might be, setting out of the 
question too any labours due to the public, some other things 
proper to be thought of, besides the vindication of Racine's 
poetical merits, and the chastisement of Dryden and others 
^vho had not done them justice. Notwithstanding, if all du- 
ties and services of stronger claim could have been first dis- 
charged, it would have been very gratifying to have received 
from him that projected treatise on Poetry, History, and 
Oratory, on the subject of which Lord Holland speaks. 

Many persons will be surprised to be informed that Mr. 
Fox was slow in composition ; and this inconvenience was in- 
creased by his extreme solicitude to keep his page clear of 
any trace of his trade, as he should seem to have regarded it, 
of public speaking. From this solicitude he refused admit- 
tance, by Lord Holland's account, to many expressions and 
7 



134 fox's JAMES THE SECONI?, 

sentiments which in a speech would have been eloquent^ 
This will be deemed an mifortunate and injurious fastidious- 
ness in our great orator ; for the consequence is, that we by 
no means find in the writing the whole mental power Ave know 
there was in the man. There is a certain bareness, and al- 
most coldness, of style, from which a reader, not otherwise 
acquainted with the force of his talents, would never learn 
the irresistible power of his eloquence: in passing along the 
pages of the work before us, we earnestly, and too often vainly, 
long for some of those mighty emanations of sentiment which 
used to set us on fire in hearing him. It were strange in- 
deed, if he considered these living fires as something of 
too professional and vulgar a kind, to be alloAved to impart 
their animation to history. It were strange if history, be- 
cause its subjects are chiefly dead men, should be required to 
preserve a kind of analogy with their skeletons, and be cold, 
and dry, and still, like them. It is certainly the office of his- 
tory to show us "a valley of dry bones;" but it interests us 
most by the energy which transforms the whole scene into 
life. 

Many pages of Lord Holland's preface are occupied with a 
very curious account of the fate of King James's manuscripts, 
deposited in the Scotch College at Paris. Mr. Fox's inquiries 
fully ascertained that they were destroyed during the late 
revolution. 

The period of our history, selected by Mr. Fox, was evi- 
dently adapted for what was of course his purpose, to illus- 
trate the nature and basis, and the whole progress of the at- 
tainment of that political freedom which this country since 
the Revolution of 1688 has enjoyed, notwithstanding many 
just causes of complaint, in a higher degree than perhaps any 
other nation of ancient or modern times. The events of that 
period were of a kind which, contemplated merely as a dra- 
matic scene, containing a certain portion of incident, show, 
and action, (the only view, unfortunately, in which most of us 
regard history,) had in former years rather a strong effect on 
the imagination, even when we did not take the trouble to 
think deeply of the political tendency and result. But in this 
respect the case will be found to be now greatly changed. 
What has taken place in our own times, has thrown all the 
transactions of several centuries past, considered as matter of 
magnificent exhibition, quite into the shade. It is but very 



FOX S JAMES THE SECOND. 135 

occasionally that the mind catches a momentary sight of the 
transactions of the times of the Charleses, James, and 
William, through some opening in the stupendous train of 
revolutions, wars, abdications, dethronements, conquests, and 
changing constitutions, which has been moving, and is still 
rapidly moving, before our eyes. Who will think of going 
back to trace the adventures of one or two monarchs-errant 
of former times, when there are whole parties of them up and 
down Europe, with a sufficient probability of additions to the 
number ? Who will go almost two centuries back to survey 
a nation risen in arms against a tyrant, though totally igno- 
rant of the true principles of liberty, when they can see such 
a phenomenon, just springing up in the neighbourhood a few 
weeks since? The contests of parties in those times, the 
questions of prerogative, the loyalty of faction leaders, the 
devising of plans of government, the ravage of armies, the 
progress of a commander into a despotic monarch, the sub- 
sidence of national enthusiasm into the apathy of slaves, are 
apt to affect us as an old and dull story, at a time when no 
one cares to buy a map of Europe, or count its kingdoms, or 
go over the list of its monarchs, or read one page about the 
nature of its constitutions of government, or ask one sentence 
about the rival parties in its states, from knowing that a few 
months may put all such information out of date. On such 
accounts, as well as from the present indisposition to any 
study of politics as a science, we have little expectation that 
the interesting production before us will do more than merely 
gratify the literary curiosity excited by the name of the great 
author. The noble spirit of liberty which pervades every 
part of it, will be flatly oflensive to many of his countrymen ; 
and will appear to others as a kind of high-spirited and pa- 
triotic romance, proving that the sanguine temperament of the 
orator of the people wonderfully retained his juvenility of 
opinion in his more advanced age, in spite of the years and 
the events that have made lliem wiser. 

So much of the volume as Mr. Fox wrote, consists of three 
chapters, of which the first is called introductory, and con- 
tains a brief retrospect of the reign of Charles II., and some 
of the circumstances of what was named the Commonwealth. 
The two latter go over about seven months of the reign of 
James II., and form the commencement of the intended his- 
tory, which, if the author had lived and enjoyed leisure, would 



136 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

probably have been brought down to a period lower than the 
Revolution ; it does not appear that his thoughts had decidedly 
fixed on any precise point of time as the limit. 

It was not to be expected that any singular novelty either of 
fact or doctrine should be brought out, in the review of a 
period so often subject to research and controversial discus- 
sion ; but we feel, as w^e did expect to feel, that we go over 
the ground with a better light than we have done before. 
There is a simplicity in the opening out of the involved crowd 
of characters and affairs, w hich brings both the individual 
objects, and their relations to one another, more palpably into 
our sight. We feel how delightful it is to go through an im- 
portant and confused scene in the company of such an illu- 
minating mind, and how easily w^e could surrender ourselves 
to an almost implicit reliance on its judgment. Connected 
with this extremely discriminating analysis, and distinct state- 
ment of facts, the reader will find every where a more un- 
affected unlaboured independence of opinion, than in perhaps 
any other of our historians ; the author seems to judge freely, 
as by a kind of inherent necessity ; and he condemns, (for in- 
deed this is the duty of his office in almost every page,) with 
an entire indifference to those circumstances to which even 
historians are often obsequious. He passes sentence on no- 
bles and kings with as little fear, and at the same time in as 
calm a tone, as the court that summoned, immediately after 
their death, the monarchs of Egypt. With respect to this 
calmness, it gives a dignified air to history ; yet we will ac- 
knowledge that in several instances, in this work, after the 
indictment and proof of enormous wickedness, we have wish- 
ed the sentence pronounced with somewhat more emphasis. 
The mildness of the man, occasionally, a little qualifies, in 
expression, the energy of justice ; but it only qualifies, it does 
not pervert it; he most impartially condemns where he ought, 
and we have only wished, in a few cases, a severer acerbity 
of language. The criminal charges however are made with 
a fulness and aggravation which might sometimes perhaps be 
deemed to excuse the historian from formally pronouncing 
any judgment, as no expression could be found by which the 
character of the criminal could be more blasted, than it is 
already by the statement of the crimes. 

If the Avork had been carried through the w^hole of the 
selected period, it would have been an admirable contrast and 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 137 

antidote to the parallel part of Hume's history, in point of 
honesty of representation. Our author justly accuses Hume 
of a constant partiality to the cause of the tyrants in his state- 
ment and reasonings, and of a base disingenuousness in his 
observations on the conduct of Charles H., respecting the 
death of Algernon Sydney ; he convicts him of a direct and 
shameful fabrication of a parliamentary debate in 1685, which 
debate did not take place, nor any thing like it ; and he as- 
cribes to him an almost puerile respect for kings, as such. 
After all this, we own it requires our whole stock of patience 
to read those extremely respectful and flattering expressions 
which he seeks every occasion, and once or twice goes much 
out of his way, to bestow on this historian ; expressions which 
are applied not only to his talents, to which they would be al- 
ways due, but to his character, to which these articles of ac- 
cusation, exhibited by his admirer, may prove what sort of 
moral principles are fairly attributable. The passage re- 
lating to the condemnation of Sydney, is a good specimen of 
our author's decided manner of expressing his opinion, and 
also of his strange prejudice in favour of Hume's moral quali- 
ties. 

Was it ever understood, till now, that a man eminent at 
once for the depth and soundness of his understanding, and 
the integrity and benevolence of his heart, can be an apolo- 
gist (the full evidence of the nature of the facts being before 
him) for the foulest murders of a tyrant ? Would not that 
integrity and benevolence of heart have been high in favour 
at the court of such a tyrant, which should have put in ex- 
ercise so strong an understanding to preserve his majesty in 
a state of entire self-complacency while perpetrating the mur- 
der of one of the noblest of his subjects and of mankind? As 
to posthumous infamy, and the retribution to be inflicted by 
history, we wonder whether such a thing ever once occurred 
to the thoughts of a tyrant, who, in pursuing to death a man 
of such heroic virtue as to have offended or alarmed him, 
could spurn every human sympathy, defy the indignation of 
all good men, and find a tribe of courtiers, comprising no- 
bles, prelates, and scholars, ever ready to applaud his justice. 
And if by "conscience" is here meant, that sentiment which 
connects with our actions a reference to a God and a future 
judgment, it is surely a very hopeful thing, that a man, who 
can deliberately brave the divine vengeance, should be in- 



138 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

timidated from committing a crime, by thinking of the fearful 
doom which awaits him in the paragraphs of some historian ! 

In speaking of the fate of Charles I., Mr. Fox, in an ar- 
gument of great candour and delicacy, disapproves of his ex- 
ecution, on the ground both of justice and policy, but especially 
the latter. He passes in too much haste over the character 
of Cromwell, and gives a rather equivocal estimate of it, ex- 
cept indeed as contrasted with that of Washington, whom he 
takes the occasion, afforded by the partial similarity of the 
situations of the two men, to celebrate in terms of the highest 
possible eulogium. 

We should hope the notion that good political institutions 
will be certain of an efficacious operation, by the mere 
strength of the dead wisdom, if we may so call it, that resides 
in their construction, independently of the character of the 
men who are in the administration of them, has lost its in- 
fluence on the public mind ; if not, the following striking 
lesson ought to contribute to expel such a vain fancy. 

*' The reign of Charles the Second forms one of the most singular, as 
well as of the most important periods of history. It is the era of good 
laws and bad government. The abolition of the Court of Wards, the re- 
peal of the writ de Heretico Comburendo, the Triennial Parliament Bill, 
the establishment of the rights of the House of Commons in regard to im- 
peachment, the expiration of the License Act, and above all, the glorious 
statute of Habeas Corpus, have therefore induced a modern writer of great 
eminence to fix the year 1679 as the period at which our constitution had 
arrived at its greatest theoretical perfection, but he owns, in a short note 
upon the passage alluded to, that the times 'mmediately following were 
timesof great practical oppression What a field for meditation does this 
short observation, from such a man, furnish! What reflections does it 
not suggest to a thinking mind, upon the ineflficacy of human laws, and 
the imperfection of human constitutions ! We are called from the con- 
templation of the progress of our constitution, and our attention is fixed 
with the most minute accuracy to a particular point, when it is said to 
have risen to its utmost perfection. Here we are then at the best mo- 
ment of the best constitution that human wisdom ever framed. What 
follows ? A time of oppression and m'sery, not arising from external 
causes, such as war, pestilence, or famine, nor even from any such alter- 
ations of the laws as might be supposed to impair this boasted perfection, 
but from a corrupt and wicked administration, which all the so much ad- 
mired checks <»f our constitution were not able to prevent. How vain, 
then, how idle, how presumptuous is the opinion that laws can do every 
thing ! and how weak and pernicious the maxim founded upon it, that 
measures, not men, are to be attended to !" — P. 20. 

The historian appears to have examined a great deal of 
evidence on the subject of the pretended popish plot, as the 



139 

result of which he gives it as his opinion, that the greater 
part of those who were concerned in the iniquitous prosecu- 
tion of the papists, were rather under the influence of " an 
extraordinary degree of blind credulity," than guilty of " the 
deliberate wickedness of planning and assisting in the per- 
petration of legal murder." 

It is most melancholy to contemplate a great nation, which 
not very long before had been animated, in however rude a 
manner, and however ill-instructed in political science, with a 
high spirit of liberty, which had raised its strong arm against the 
impositions of a nunarch who thought it necessary for a go- 
vernor to be a despot, and had prostrated him and his- armies 
in the dust, submitting at last to the unqualified despotism of a 
much more odious tyrant. The view is still more mortifying, 
when we consider that this tyrant had never performed any 
one great action, and possessed no one virtue under heaven, 
to palliate even in appearance his depravity, and lessen, to 
the people, the ignominy of being his slaves. But it is most 
mortifying of all to find that these slaves were beaten and 
trodden into such fatuit}-, that they voluntarily abdicated all 
the rites of both men and brutes, and humbly lauded the 
master who sported with their privileges, their property, and 
their blood. No inconsiderable part of this volume consists 
of descriptions of such national humiliation ; and we trans- 
<iribe a short specimen, immediately following the account of 
Charles's turning off his last parliament, with the full resolu- 
tion never to call another ; " to which resolution, indeed, 
Louis had bound him, as one of the conditions on which he 
was to receive his stipend." 

" Ni moasure was ever attended with more complete success. The 
most flitterinor addresses poured in from all parts of the kinsfdom ; divine 
ritrht and indiscriminate obedience were every where the favourite doc- 
trines ; and men s^ernsd to vie with each other who should have the 
honDur of the greatest share in the glorious work of slavery, by securing to 
the king, for the present, and, after him, to the duke, absolute and un- 
« jntrollable p )wer. They, who, either because Charles had been called a 
f irgiving prince by his fi itterers, (upon what ground I could never dis- 
cover) or from some supposed connexion between indolence and good 
nature, had deceived themselves into a hope that his tyranny would be of 
the milder sort, found th'>m^;dves much disappointed in their expectations. 
The whole history of the remaining [)art of his reign, exhibits an uninter- 
rupted series of attacks upon the liberty, property, and Uves of his sub- 
jects.''— P. 43. 



140 pox's JAMES THE SECOND, 

The most outrageous operations of Charles's tyranny were 
carried on in Scotland. This work exhibits, in considerable 
detail, the horrible system of proscription and murder, which 
has given him a ver}- reasonable claim to the company, in 
history or any where else, of Tiberius ; for so we must be al- 
lowed to think, notwithstanding Mr. Fox has taken exception 
to Burnet's classing these two names together, forgetting that 
he himself had done the very same thing in an earlier 
page. 

The scene becomes more hateful at every step ; till at 
length we behold one general spectacle of massacre, in which 
the most infernal riots of cruelty to which military ruffians, 
fully let loose, could be stimulated, were authorized and ap- 
plauded by a government, which colleges^ and dignitaries, and 
a large and preponderating part of the nation, adored as of 
divine authority, and really deserved, as a reward of such a 
faith, the privilege of adoring. It is after viewing such a 
course of transactions, that we want expressions of somewhat 
more emphatical reprobation, in closing the account with this 
wricked monarch, than those, though very strong and com- 
prehensive, which Mr. Fox has used in the concluding de- 
lineation of his character. It was very proper to notice his 
politeness and affability, his facility of temper, and kindness 
to his mistresses ; but we think they should not have been so 
mentioned, as to have even the slightest appearance of a 
set off against the malignity of his wickedness and the atro- 
cities of his government. 

The manner in which Charles's kindness to his mistresses 
is mentioned, is a remarkable illustration of the importance 
of personal morality to a historian, as well as to a states- 
man. 

"His recnminendation of the Duchess of Port?inouth and Mrs. Gwyn, 
upon his death bed to his successor, is much to liis honour; and they 
who censure it, Fe(in, in their zeal to show the msi Ives strict morahf-ts, 
to have suffered their notions of vice and virtue to have fallen into strange 
confusion. Charles's connexion with those ladies might be vicious but 
at a moment when that connexion was upon the point of being finally 
and irrevocably dissolved, to concern himself about their future welfare, 
and to recomn)end ihem to his brother with earnest tenderness, was vir. 
tue It is not for the interest of morality that the good and evl actions of 
bad men should be confounded." — F. (i4. 

We do not know that any moralist ever bade a departing 



fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 141 

criminal to be concerned for the welfare of his surviving com- 
panions in guilt, only it would be enjoined that shame and 
penitence should mingle with this concern ; but every moralist 
will be indignant at this gentle equivocal mode of touching 
that vice, by which it is notorious that the example of the king 
contributed to deprave the morals of the nation, as much as 
his political measures to exterminate its freedom. It is most 
signally remarkable what a careful silence is maintained, in 
this work, respecting the state of morals during this reign. 
Is it then no business of history to take account of such a 
thing ? Even regarding the matter in a political view, is the 
depravity of a people never to be reckoned among the causes, 
and the most powerful causes, of their sinking quietly under 
despotism ? 

The commencement of James's reign, as far as the work 
before us has illustrated it, was a mere continuation of the 
preceding, as James, at his accession, graciously promised his 
subjects it should. This promise was received with grateful 
joy by a large proportion of the English nation, and by the 
governing party even in Scotland, whose fulsome abominable 
address of congratulation is given in this work. Their joy 
and loyalty were carried to the height of enthusiasm, no doubt, 
when they found the same infernal work of massacre ani- 
mated to redoubled activit}^ and were honoured with the 
charge of executing an act, which extended to all persons 
hearing conventicle preaching, the punishment of death. 

Though James was a papist, Mr. Fox has proved, by the 
most decisive arguments, that his grand leading object was 
the establishment of an absolute despotism ; and that any 
designs he might entertain of introducing popery, would have 
been kept in reserve till this was accomplished. Meanwhile 
he much courted the zealous adherents of the established 
church, and he plainly intimated that they had been found the 
firmest friends of such government, as that of his father, his 
brother, and himself. It is strange that a man of Mr. Fox's 
candour should, throughout the book, have contrived to find 
the very same thing. It surely became him, in the justice of 
history, to have particularized the many noble efforts made by 
the churchmen of those times, in resistance of the doctrines 
and the practices of despotism. He ought to have taken no- 
tice of what was so zealously done and written, by eccle- 
siastical dignitaries, in behalf of liberty of conscience, and in 



142 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

prevention of all persecution for religious opinions and me- 
thods of worship. 

A large space is occupied with the invasions and proceed- 
ings of Monmouth and Argyle. The account of the exe- 
cution of Monmouth is finely written ; but the most interest- 
ing part of the whole volume, is the account of the last days 
and the death of Argyle. It is a picture drawn with the hap- 
piest simplicity, though with one slight blemish, of one of the 
most enchanting examples of heroic virtue that history or 
poetry ever displayed. It is closed with what we felt to be 
the most eloquent sentence in the whole work. 

After his capture, as Mr. Fox relates, "Argyle was imme- 
diately carried to Renfrew, thence to Glasgow, and on the 
twentieth of June was led in triumph to Edinburgh. The 
order of the council was particular ; that he should be led 
bareheaded, in the midst of Graham's guards, with their 
matches cocked, his hands tied behind his back, and preceded 
by the common hangman ; in which situation, that he might 
be the more exposed to the insults and taunts of the vulgar, it 
was directed that he should be carried to the Castle by a cir- 
cuitous route. To the equanimity with which he bore these 
indignities, as indeed to the manly spirit exhibited by him 
throughout in these last scenes of his life, ample testimony is 
borne by all the historians. Speaking of the supineness of 
his countrymen, and of the little assistance that he had receiv- 
ed from them, he declares with his accustomed piety, his re- 
signation to the will of God, which was that ' Scotland should 
not be delivered at this time nor especially by his hand.' 
He then exclaims with the regret of a patriot, but with no 
bitterness of disappointment — 'But alas! who is then to 
be delivered ? There may,' says he, ' be hidden ones, but 
there appears no great party in the country who desire to be 
relieved.' 

" When he is told that he is to be put to the torture, he 
neither breaks out into any high-sounding bravado, any pre- 
mature vaunts of the resolution with which he will endure it, 
nor on the other hand, into passionate exclamations on the 
cruelty of his enemies, or unmannerly lamentations of his fate. 
After stating that orders were arrived, that he must be tortured, 
unless he answers all questions upon oath, he simply adds, that 
he hopes God will support him ; and then leaves off writing, 
not from any want of spirits to proceed, but to enjoy the con. 



fox's JAMES THE SECOXD. 143 

solation which was left him, in the society of his wife, the 
Countess being just then admitted. 

" Religious concerns, in which he seems to have been very 
serious and sincere, engaged mi ch of his thoughts ; while he 
anticipates, with a hope approaching to certainty, of a happy 
futurity, he does not forget those who had been justly dear to 
him in this world. He writes on the day of his execution to 
his wife, and to some other relatives, for whom he seems to 
have entertained a sort of parental tenderness, short but the 
most affectionate letters, wherein he gives them the greatest 
satisfaction in his power, by assuring them of his composure 
and tranquillity of mind, and reters them for further consola- 
tions to those sources from which he derived his own. He 
states that those in whose hands he is, had at first used him 
hardly, but that God had melted their hearts, and that he was 
now treated with civility. Never perhaps did a few sentences 
present so striking a picture of a mind truly virtuous and hon- 
ourable. Heroic courage is the least part of his praise, and 
vanishes as it were from our sight, when we contemplate the 
sensibility with which he acknowledges the kindness, such as 
it was, of the very men who are leading him to the scaffold ; 
the generous satisfaction which he feels on reflecting that no 
confession of his had endangered his associates ; and above 
all, his anxiety, in such moments, to perform all the duties of 
friendship and gratitude, not only with the most scrupulous ex- 
actness, but with the most considerate attention to the feelings 
as well as to the interests of the person who was the object of 
them. Indeed, it seems throughout, to have been the peculiar 
felicity of this man's mind, that every thing was present to it 
that ought to be so ; nothing that ought not. Of his country, 
he could not be unmindful ; and it was one among other con- 
sequences of his happy temper, that on this subject he did 
not entertain those gloomy ideas which the then state of Scot- 
land was but too well fitted to inspire. In a conversation 
with an intimate friend, he says, that though he does not take 
upon him to be a prophet, he doubts not but that deliverance 
will come, and suddenly, of which his failings had rendered 
him unworthy to be the instrument. In some verses which he 
composed on the night preceding his execution, and which he 
intended for his epitaph, he thus expresses this hope more 
distinctly ; 



144 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 

" ' On my attempt thougrh Providence did frown, 
His oppress d people God at lenijth will own ; 
Another hand, by more successful speed, 
Shall raise the remnant, bruise the serpent's head.' 

" For constancy and equanimity under the severest trials, 
few men have equalled, none ever surpassed the Earl of Ar- 
gyle. The most powerful of all tempters, hope, was not held 
out to him ; so that he had not, in addition to his other hard 
tasks, that of resisting her seductive influence ; but the pas- 
sions of a different class had the fullest scope for their attacks. 
These however would make no impression on his well-disci- 
plined mind. Anger could not exasperate, fear could not 
appal him ; and if disappointment and indignation at the mis- 
behaviour of his followers and the supineness of the country, 
occasionally did cause uneasy sensations, they had not the 
power to extort from him one unbecoming, or even querulous 
expression. Let him be weighed ever so scrupulously, and 
in the nicest scales, he will not be found, in a single instance, 
wanting in the charity of a Christian, the firmness and benev- 
olence of a patriot, the integrity and fidelity of a man of hon- 
our. 

" In order that the triumph of injustice might be complete, 
it was determined that without any new trial the Earl should 
suffer upon the iniquitous sentence of 1682. Accordingly on 
the thirtieth day of June, 1685, he was brought from the Cas- 
tle to the Laigh Council House, and thence to the place of 
execution. Before he left the Castle he had his dinner at the 
usual hour, at which he discoursed not only calmly but even 
cheerfully. After dinner he retired to his bed-chamber, where 
he slept quietly for about a quarter of an hour. While he 
was asleep, one of the members of the Council came and inti- 
mated a desire to speak with him. Upon being told that he 
was asleep, the manager disbelieved the account. To satisfy 
him the door was half opened, and he then beheld in a sweet 
and tranquil slumber the man who, by the doom of him and 
his fellows, was to die within the space of two hours. Struck 
with the sight, he hurried from the room, quitted the Castle 
with the utmost precipitation, and hid himself in the lodgings 
of an acquaintance, flung himself upon the first bed that pre- 
sented itself, and had every appearance of a man suffering the 
most excruciating torture. His friend offered him some wine. 
He refused, saying — ' No, that will not help me ; I have been 



145 

with Argyle, and saw him sleeping as pleasantly as ever man 

did, within an hour of eternity. But as for me' What 

a satisfactory spectacle to a philosophical mind, to see the op- 
pressor in the zenith of his power envying his victim ! What 
an acknowledgment of the superiority of virtue ! What an 
affecting and forcible testimony to the value of that peace of 
mind which innocence alone can confer ! When we reflect 
that the guilt which agonized that man was probably incurred 
for the sake of some vain title, or at least of some increase of 
wealth, which he did not want and possibly knew not how to 
enjoy, our disgust is turned into compassion for that very fool- 
ish class of men, whom the world calls wise in their genera- 
tion. 

" Soon after his short repose, Argyle was brought to the 
Council-House, from which place is dated the letter to his 
wife, and thence to execution. On the scaffold he had some 
discourse with the two ministers, Mr. Annan and Mr. Char- 
teus. He desired both of them to pray for him, and prayed 
himself with much fervency and devotion. The same mixture 
of firmness and mildness is conspicuous in every part of the 
speech which he then made to the people. He said — ' We 
ought not to despise our afflictions, nor to faint under them. 
We must not suffer ourselves to be exasperated against the in- 
struments of our troubles, nor by fraudulent, nor pusillanimous 
compliances, bring guilt upon ourselves. Faint hearts ordi- 
narily, are false hearts, choosing sin rather than suffering.' 
Having then asked pardon for his own failings both of God 
and man, he would have concluded ; but being reminded that 
he had said nothing of the Royal family — he adds, that he 
prayed, that there might never be wanting one of the Royal 
family to support the Protestant religion ; and if any of them 
had swerved from the true faith, he prayed God to turn their 
hearts, but at any rate to save his people from their machina- 
tions. He then turned to the south side of the scaffold, and 
said — ' I pray you do not misconstruct my behaviour this day ! 
I freely forgive all men their wrongs and injuries done against 
me, as I hope to be forgiven of God.' Mr. x4nnan repeated 
those words louder to the people. The Earl then went to the 
north side of the scaffold, and used the same or like expres- 
sions. Mr. Annan repeated them again, and said — ' This 
nohleman dies a Protestant.^ — The Earl stepped forward again, 
and said — ' / die not only a Protestant^ hut with a heart' 



146 FOX S JAMES THE SECOND. 

hatred of Popery, Prelacy, and all superstition whatsorneverJ* 
He then embraced his friends, gave some tokens of his re- 
membrance to his son-in-law, Lord Maitland, for his daugh- 
ter and grand-children, stripped himself of part of his apparel, 
of which he likewise made presents, and laid his head upon the 
block. Having uttered a short prayer, he gave the signal to 
the executioner, which was instantly obeyed, and his head 
was severed from his body. — Such were the last hours, and 
such the final close of that great man's life. May the like 

HAPPY SERENITY IN SUCH DREADFUL CIRCUMSTANCES, AND A 
DEATH EQUALLY GLORIOUS, BE THE LOT OF ALL WHOM TYR- 
ANNY, OF WHATEVER DENOMINATION OR DESCRIPTION, IN ANY 
AGE, OR IN ANY COUNTRY, SHALL CALL TO EXPIATE THEIR 

VIRTUES ON THE SCAFFOLD !" — History, Chapter HI., year 
1685. 



edgewoeth's professional education. 147 

V. 

EDGEWORTH'S PROFESSIOXAL EDUCATION. 



Essays on Professional Education. By R. L. Edgeworth, 
Esq., F.R.S., M.R.I. A. 

In literary partnership with a female relative, this author 
has become sufficiently well known to the public, to enable it 
to prejudge with tolerable confidence the general qualities of 
any work he might write, especially on the subject of educa- 
tion. His book will be opened with the expectation of a very 
good share of valuable instruction, the result of a long and 
careful exercise of sound sense on the habits of society, on 
the experience of education, and on a great multitude of books. 
There will be no hope of convicting the author of enthusiasm 
for a system, or servility to any distinguished authority. It 
will be expected that good use will be made of the opinions 
of the most opposite speculatists, and that most of the opinions 
that are approved will be supported by some reference to ex- 
periments by which they have been verified. It will be ex- 
pected that, while a philosophic manner and diction are avoid- 
ed, and all speculations are constantly applied to a practical 
purpose, full advantage will yet be taken of those explana- 
tions which the laws of our nature have received from the 
best modern philosophers. The reader will reckon on find- 
ing it constantly maintained, that the influence of facts has 
fully as efficient an operation as instruction by words, in form- 
ing the human character ; and he will not be surprised at a tone 
of somewhat more positive confidence than himself is happy 
enough to entertain, of the complete and necessary success of 
the process, when it unites the proper facts and the proper 
instructions. As a moralist, it will perhaps raise no wonder 
if the author should be found so much a man of the world, as 
to admit various convenient compromises between the pure 
principles of virtue, and the customs and prejudices of society ; 



148 edgewoeth's professional education, 

and as to religion, no man will expect bigotry, or ascetic and 
incommodious piety, or any sort of doctrinal theology. There 
will be an agreeable and confident expectation of a great va- 
riety of pertinent anecdotes, supplied from history and obser- 
vation, at once to relieve and illustrate the reasonings. The 
reader will be prepared to accept this mode of infusing both 
vivacity and instructive force into the composition, instead of 
brilliance of imagination ; comprehensive knowledge instead 
of argumentative subtlety ; and perspicuity of language instead 
of elegance. 

The first essay, or chapter, proposes principles and plans 
for those stages of education, which, preceding the direct 
training for a particular profession, admit of a discipline in 
many points common to the children destined to all the 
professions. And yet, as parents are urged to fix at a very 
early period the future profession of each of their sons, they 
are properly recommended to introduce at an early stage of 
this general discipline a specific modification of it, prospec- 
tive to the profession selected. In advising parents to this 
early choice, the author explodes, in a great measure, the 
popular notion of a natural inherent determination toward 
some one pursuit more than another, commonly called " pecu- 
liar genius," "impulse of genius," "bent of mind," "natural 
turn," &c. In attacking this notion, he calls in the power- . 
ful aid of Johnson, who always manifested an extreme antipa- 
thy to it. " I hate," said he, " to hear people ask children 
whether they will be bishops, or chancellors, or generals, or 
what profession their genius leads them to : do not they 
know, that a boy of seven years old has a genius for nothing 
but spinning a top and eating apple-pie ?" Mr. Edgeworth 
condemns the folly of waiting in expectation that the supposed 
natural genius will disclose itself, or be drawn forth by some 
accident ; during all which time the general discipline of edu- 
cation will probably be very remiss, the specific training pre- 
paratory to professional studies will be systematically avoided, 
and the youth is either growing up to be fit for nothing, or is per- 
haps determined at last by a casual event, or unfortunate ac- 
quaintance, to the very worst selection that he could have 
made in the whole catalogue of employments. It is insisted, 
that methods which will generally prove effectual may be 
adopted by parents, to give the child a preference for any de- 
partment of learning or action they choose, and to make him 



edgewoeth's professional education. 149 

sedulous to acquire the requisite qualifications. The author 
notices some of the most remarkable instances recorded of 
persons being determined by a particular accident to the pur- 
suits in which they afterwards excelled ; as Cowley's passion 
for poetry originated from his meeting with the tairy Queen 
in his mother s window ; and Sir Joshua Reynolds's for paint- 
ing, from his chancing to open a book by Richardson, on that 
subject, at a friend's house. Mr. Edgeworth observes, that 
the effect produced by reading these books would not have 
been less if they had been laid in the way by design ; and 
that, besides, when an impression is to be made by design, 
the efiect is not left to depend on a single impression, since 
by a judicious management the child may be subjected to a 
combination and a series of impressions, all tending to the 
same point. The manner of conducting this process is 
sketched with a great deal of knowledge and judgment in 
these essays. If the magnitude and certainty of the eftect to 
be thus produced are assumed in terms rather too little quali- 
fied, it is an error on the right side ; since it will invigorate 
the motive by which parents and friends are to be prompted 
to design and perseverance, and since nothing can be practi- 
cally more mischievous, than the fancy that all is to be done 
by some innate predisposition and adaptation, aided by fortui- 
tous occurrences. At the same time, our author does not 
need to be reminded, that, as a thousand boys of the same ages 
as Cowley and Reynolds might have met with, and partly 
read, the Fairy Queen, and the book on painting, without re- 
ceiving from them any strong determination to poetry or 
painting ; so, from the same cause, — the same intrinsic men- 
tal difibrence, whatever be the ultimate principle of that 
diflerence, — the proposed discipline of multiplied and succes- 
sive impressions, passing just an equal length of time on 
a thousand youthful minds, will eventually leave, notwith- 
standing, all imaginable varieties in their dispositions and 
qualifications. Nevertheless, there will be many more 
heroes, or orators, or engineers, than if no such process had 
been employed ; and those who fail to become heroic, or 
eloquent, or scientific, will yet be less absolutely the reverse 
of those characters, than they would otherwise have been. 
Our author touches but briefly on the nature of that undenia- 
ble original distinction which constitutes what is denominated 
genius ; and maintains, very reasonably, that whatever might 



150 edgeworth's professional education. 

have been the nature, the cause, or the amount, of the inhe« 
rent original difference between such men as Newton, Milton, 
and Locke, and ordinary men, that original difference was 
probably far less than the actual difference after the full effect 
of impressions, cultivation, and exertion. He suggests some 
very useful cautions to parents, against treating their children 
according to the mysterious and invidious distinction of " ge- 
nius" and "no genius." 

Thedefectsand the cultivation of memory are shortly noticed ; 
and it is maintained, that any memory may be so disciplined, 
as to be quite competent to the most important matters of bu- 
siness and science. In proof of this, and as a lesson on the 
best mode of cultivation, the example of Le Sage, the philoso- 
pher of Geneva, is introduced, and would have been very in- 
structive if his method of retaining his knowledge by connect- 
ing it with a set of general principles, (a sort of corks to keep 
it in buoyancy) had been more precisely explained by means 
of two or three exemplilications. There are some very useful 
observations on the several relations of ideas which are the 
instruments of recollection ; as resemblance, contrariety, con- 
tiguity, and cause and effect ; it is strongly and justly insisted, 
that the memory which operates most by means of the last of 
these relations is by far the most useful, and therefore that the 
best mode of cultivating it is a severe attention to this relation. 

Mr. Edgeworth censures, but not in illiberal language, the 
system which prevails in our public schools, and our colleges, 
in which so disproportionate a measure of time is devoted to 
classical studies, and in the former of which the course of in- 
struction is the same for all the youth, though they are intend- 
ed for all the different professions. He advises not to force 
any violent reforms on these ancient institutions, but to induce 
their gradual and voluntary melioration, or, if that be possi- 
ble, to superannuate them, by means of new though smaller 
seminaries, in which a much greater share of attention shall 
be given to science, to studies of direct moral and political 
utility, and to the peculiar preparation for professions. He 
adverts to the system of education adopted by the Jesuits ; 
and the plans devised by Frederic " the Great," as he is here 
designated ; and reviews at some length the succession of 
magnilicent schemes projected by the French philosophers 
before and in the course of the revolution. Some of these 
schemes were practically attempted, and they failed, partly 



151 

from being on too vast a scale, and beginning with too high 
a species of instruction, and partly from that state of national 
tumult which withdrew both the attention and the pecuniary 
support indispensable to these great undertakings. At length, 
a party of philosophers obtained the complete establishment 
of a more limited, but as far as it extends, more effective in- 
stitution, under the denomination of Ecole Polytechnique. In 
the general course of education in France, however, our au- 
thor observes, classical literature has of late years been re- 
garded with such indifference or contempt, as to have threat- 
ened a depravation of taste and of language ; the studies of 
youth having been directed with incomparably the most emu- 
lation and ardour, to the branches of knowledge related or 
capable of being applied to the art of war. He relates how 
the men of science rose to the highest importance at the very 
period at which it might have been previously imagined they 
must have sunk into utter obscurity, the hour of revolutionary 
violence and terror. 

Our author's scheme for the formation of an improved order 
of elementary and superior schools in this country, is laid 
down with much good sense, and without visionary extrava- 
gance, particularly without the extravagance of expecting any 
assistance from the legislature. He would create and sup- 
port them simply by the conviction, in the minds of parents 
in each town and village, of the usefulness and even necessity 
of such a mode of instruction as he advises ; a mode which 
should include, without any ostentation, an attention to more 
branches of knowledge than are usually acquired in schools. 
Or, if it were desirable there should be any expedient more 
formal, for promoting such schools, than merely the wish of 
parents to obtain such instruction, he recommends there should 
be an association of gentlemen in London to patronize their 
formation in any part of the country to which they can extend 
their influence and aid. But the only efficacious power to 
create competent seminaries, is the concurrent will of a toler- 
able proportion of the parents, in any place, to have their 
children instructed in the rational manner proposed. 

The second essay is on Clerical Education. Considering 
the expensiveness of a residence at college, and the very in- 
adequate salaries of curates, the author dissuades parents who 
have not such connexions as may assist their son's success in 
the church, from choosing this profession for him ; unless they 



152 edgeworth's professional education. 

have fortune sufficient to contribute to his support for perhaps 
many years after his entrance on it, or he has ah*eady ac- 
quired a very strong determination of mind towards it, accom- 
panied by such proofs of application and unusual talent as 
may warrant a presumption that he will make his way through 
all difficulties by the force of conspicuous merit. By making 
his wai/, is meant, of course, his attaining the emoluments 
and honours of the church ; and it is obvious enough, that a 
young man who has no means of doing this but his personal 
qualities and conduct, has little ground for such a presump- 
tion, when it is considered how much the disposal of the 
ecclesiastical good things is regulated by parliamentary in- 
terest, and the favour of persons of rank. The parliamentary 
interest confessedly so powerful in making dignitaries and 
rich incumbents, our author decides to be partly beneficial 
and partly injurious to the church and to national morality. 

" That which is exerted by rich commoners or noble families, to obtain 
living^s for men of learning and virtue, who have been tutors to their 
children, is hiojhly advantageous ; it insures good education to our young 
nobility, and it encourages men of learning and talents, in the middle or 
lower orders of life, to instruct themselves, and become fit for such em- 
ployments, and worthy of such rewards. Parliamentary interest, in. 
fluencing the distribution of clerical honours and emoluments, is also 
beneficial, as it tempts parents of good (amilies and fortunes to educate 
younger sons for the church : they give, as it were, a family pledge for 
the good conduct of their children, who at the same time may by their 
maimers and rank, raise the whole profession in the esteem and respect 
of the public. Church benefices may thus be considered as a fund for 
the provision of the younger sons of our gentry and nobles ; and in this 
ponit of view it cannot surely be a matter of complaint to any of the 
higlier and middle classes of the community, that the clergy enjoy a 
large portion of the riches of the state." — P. 59 

No reader, it is presumed, can permit himself for one mo- 
ment to doubt, whether all these arrangements can fail to 
keep in view, as their grand object, the promotion of primitive 
Christianity among the people, or to prove the best possible 
means of teaching and exemplifying it; whether the men 
from the inferior classes, thus seeking and attaining the pre- 
ferments of the church through the medium of tutorships in 
noble families, be secure against all possibility of becoming 
sycophants in the course of their progress, and political tools 
at its conclusion ; or whether zealous piety, and a dereliction 
of the spirit and fashions of the world, be the necessary in- 
heritance of the younger sons of the nobility and gentry. On 



EDGEWORTH S PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 153 

these points there can be no doubt; and therefore it is clear 
that thus far the parliamentary interest in question is highly 
beneficial to the Christian cause. But the subject has a dark 
side as well as a bright one ; and every reader will be at 
once grieved and astonished on reading the next paragraph, 
in which our author says, in so many words, " But parlia- 
mentary interest is not always employed in this manner ; it 
is sometimes exerted to obtain livings for the mean hanger- 
on of one lord, or the drinking or the profligate companion of 
another." These are literatim the words, as they stand in 
the book before us ; but how is it possible they can be true ? 
How is it possible that any bishop will sufter such a man to 
declare before him that he is moved by the Holy Ghost to 
enter the sacred function ? Or, if it is alter his entrance into 
the church that he becomes such a character, how is it pos- 
sible an institution framed purely in aid of Christianity should 
fail to have the most peremptory regulations, not only for in- 
terdicting such a man from preferment to larger emoluments 
and more extensive cure of souls, but for expelling him from 
the ministry altogether ? 

If parents have resolved to devote a son to the church, a 
judicious education will, according to the essayist, infallibly 
make him a person to do honour to the sacred vocation. In 
order to determine the right method of education for this 
specific purpose, our author delineates at length the required 
character, in the successive oflicial stages of curate, rector, 
and prelate. He informs us that " a good curate is not the 
man who boasts of being the boon companion of the jolly 
squire, who is seen following hini and his hounds at full cry, 
leaping five -barred gates, the admiration of the hallooing 
heroes of the chase, or, floundering in the mud, their sport 
and derision : he is not the man set officially, at the toot of 
his patron's table, "to smack his wine, and rule his roast :" 
he neither drinks nor swears : he scorns to become the buf- 
foon, and never can become the butt, of the company. In- 
deed, he does not feel it absolutely necessary to be continually 
in company." The character which our author proposes to 
create, is extremely amiable in all the situations and offices 
in which it is represented. The reader will be prepared not 
to expect any very strong emphasis to be laid on religion, in 
the strict sense of the M'ord ; he may supply that desideratum, 
from his own mind, to a sketch of exemplary prudence, dig- 



154 edgeworth's professional education. 

iiity, kindness to the poor and sick, diligence, propriety in the 
performance of the public offices of the church, and modera- 
tion on advancement to superior station. There seems a 
material omission in the description of a good rector. After 
the melancholy picture given of the misery and degradation 
suffered by many curates from extreme poverty, we confidently 
expected to find it made an essential point, in the good cha- 
racter of the rector, never to suffer his curate to be in this 
situation from the parsimony of the stipend. As the legisla- 
ture has declined to interfere in this concern, it lies with the 
holders of livings to give their curates that complacency in 
their office which accompanies a respectable competence, or 
to gall them with the mortification, impatience, and disgust, 
inflicted by a long, toilsome, and hunger-bitten apprenticeship 
to some better station, towards which they will be continually 
looking with a loathing and abhorrence of the present con- 
dition, and which they will be tempted to practise the grossest 
servility in order to obtain. What must be the natural effect, 
on the state of the church, of perhaps several thousands of 
its ministers having their characters and exertions subjected 
for many years, if not for life, to the operation of such feel- 
ings as these ? And what are all the gentlemanly qualities 
of a rector worth, if he can be content to see a fellow-clergy- 
man and his family half starving on the five per cent, which 
the said rector affords him from his ecclesiastical income, for 
taking the work of the parish off his hands ? 

Having exhibited the model of excellence in the different 
clerical ranks, in all of which he says it is the very same 
character that is required, and the highest of which none 
should attain without having commenced with the lowest, the 
writer proceeds to the proper training for making the good 
curate, rector, and bishop. And the plan includes something 
extremely specific and peculiar, for it proceeds on the princi- 
ple that " the virtues of a clergyman should be founded on 
religion ;" a foundation, which we cannot, from this work, 
ascertain to be necessary to the virtue of other professional 
characters, or necessary to man in general as a moral agent. 
We are not distinctly informed whether religion, that is, of 
course, Christianity, is to be considered as any thing more 
than a convenient basis for a profession, with its appropriate 
set of peculiar decorums ; or whether it is really a system of 
truth communicated by divine revelation. Nor are we taught to 



edgeworth's professional educations-. 155 

comprehend how, if Christianity be to be regarded as such a 
system, education in general, and education tor the other par- 
ticular professions, can be safely and innocently conducted un- 
der the exclusion of this divine system of doctrine and moral 
principles ; and not only an exclusion, but in some of the de- 
partments of education, a most pointed and acknowledged oppo- 
tion. Possibly the light in which the subject is regarded is this 
— that it is a very trifling question whether Christianity be true 
or false ; but that it teaches some principles and modes of ac- 
tion, the prevalence of which to a certain extent would be use- 
ful in society, and therefore it is desirable they should be incul- 
cated ; while, on the other hand, the condition of society re- 
quires the prevalence also, to a certain extent, of directly op- 
posite principles, and therefore the same regard to utility re- 
quires that other professions should support, and be supported 
by, those opposite principles. — With entire gravity our author 
takes quite the Christian ground, in settling the moral princi- 
ples of the youth destined to the church. It is while deciding 
whether his education should be in a great measure private 
or at a public school. 

The private education recommended is not to be a recluse 
education : the youth is to see the friends and acquaintance of 
the family, and mix in general conversation. He is to be led 
gradually, and not with too much haste, into a comprehension 
of the principal truths, — perhaps we should rather say pro- 
positions or notions, — of religion, and into a firm faith in 
them, founded on the " broad basis of evidence." A devo- 
tional taste is to be created by " letting a child have oppor- 
tunities of observing the sublime and beautiful appearances 
of nature, the rising and the setting sun, the storm of winter 
and the opening flowers of spring," to all which, however, 
compared with the " top and apple-pie," most children will 
probably manifest the utmost indifference. The impressions 
are to be reinforced by Mrs. Barbauld's beautiful hymns, by 
good descriptions of the striking objects in nature, and by 
good church music. The most simple and affecting narrative 
parts of the Bible are to be added as soon as they can be 
clearly understood ; but the author strongly disapproves of 
children at an early age being set to read the Bible at large, 
when a great portion of it must be unintelligible to them, 
M hen the irksomeness of having it for a sort of task-book, 
and the carelessness resulting from constant familiarity with 



156 edgeworth's professional education. 

it, may predispose the pupil to regard it with dislike, and dis- 
quaiity him tor feeling the full impression of its sanctity and 
grandeur in subsequent life. Instructors are admonished to 
be cautious of giving the child erroneous and mean ideas of 
the Divine Being by minute illustrations or trivial and de- 
ceptive analogies ; of habitually threatening his vengeance 
on their faults, in the form either of immediate judgments or 
future retribution ; and of describing the future state with the 
particularity which must divest the idea of all its sublimity. 
Considering it as impossible, by the nature of the youthful 
mind, that very young children can be effectually governed by 
ideas of a remote futurity, our author advises not to make use 
of these ideas in governing them^ " till reiterated experience 
shall have given them the habit of believing that what was 
future has become present." With regard to attempting to 
connect, in the minds of the children, ideas of the divine 
anger, and the punishments of a future state, with their faults 
and vices, we think there are pious parents and teachers that 
need some admonition. To resort, with a promptitude which 
has at least the effect of profaneness, to these awful ideas, on 
every recurrence of carelessness or perversity, is the way 
both to bring those ideas into contempt, and to make all faults 
appear equal. It is also obvious, that, by trying this expedient 
on all occasions, parents will bring their authority into con- 
tempt. If they would not have that authority set at de- 
fiance, they must be able to point to immediate consequences, 
within their power to inflict on delinquency. Perhaps one of 
the most prudential rules respecting the enforcement on the 
minds of children of the conviction that they are accountable 
to an all-seeing though unseen Governor, and liable to the 
punishment of obstinate guilt in a future state, is, to take op- 
portunities of impressing this idea the most cogently, at sea- 
sons when the children are not lying under any blame or dis- 
pleasure, at moments of serious kindness on the part of the 
parents, and serious inquisiti"eness on the part of the chil- 
dren, leaving in some degree the conviction to have its own 
effect, greater or less, in each particular instance of guilt, 
according to the greater or less degree of aggravation which 
the child's own conscience can be made secretly to acknow, 
ledge in that guilt. And another obvious rule will be, that 
when he is to be solemnly reminded of these religious sanc- 
tions and dangers in immediate connexion with an actual 



m 
edgeworth's professional education. 157 

instance of criminality in his conduct, the instance should be 
one of the most serious of his faults, that will bear the utmost 
seriousness of such an admonition. As to how early in life 
this doctrine may be communicated, there needs no more pre- 
cise rule than this ; that it ma\" be as early as well-instructed 
children are found to show any signs of prolonged or return- 
ing inquisitiveness concerning the supreme Cause of all that 
they behold, and concerning what becomes of persons known 
to them in their neighbourhood, whom they find passing, one 
after another, through the change called death, about which 
their curiosity will not be at all satisfied by merely learning 
its name. These inquiries will often begin to interest them, 
and therefore these doctrines and sanctions of religion may 
be beneficially introduced into their minds, sooner a great 
deal than our author seems willing they should hear any thing 
about God as a Judge, or a fiiture state of retribution. Be- 
sides, we do not know what the economy may be at Edge- 
worth's Town, but in a family where there is any avowed at- 
tention to religion, where the children are made acquainted 
with even only select portions of the Scriptures, where there 
are any visible acts of devotion, and where it is a practice to 
attend public worship, it is quite impossible to prevent them 
from acquiring the ideas in question in some form ; and there- 
fore, unless parents will adopt systematically, and maintain 
with the most vigilant care, the practical habits of atheists, in 
order to keep the children's minds clear of these ideas, there 
is an absolute necessity of presenting these ideas in a correct 
though inadequate form as early as possible to the mind, to 
prevent their being fixed there in a form that shall be absurd 
and injurious. 

The Essay proceeds to indicate the practical discipline for 
cultivating, or rather creating, the virtues of economy, charity, 
tolerance, and firmness of mind. Here we meet with one of 
the many instances of compromise between absolute principle 
and convenience. 

" In marking the difference between education for different professions, 
we may observe that a clergyman's should essentially differ from a law- 
yer's in one respect. A boy intended for the bar may be, in some degree, 
indulged in that pertinacious temper, which glories in supporting an opin- 
ion by all the arguments that can be adduced in its favour ; but a boy 
designed for the church should never be encouraged to argue for victory ; 
he fihould never be applauded for pleading his cause well, for supporting^ 
8 



158 

his o-wn opinion, or for decrying or exposing to ridicule that of his oppo- 
nent." P. 88. 

It seems quite a settled principle of our author's morality, 
thus to make the character of the man not only secondary to 
the professional character, but a sacrifice to it. Nor can we 
know where the operation of this principle is to be limited, 
nor whether it has any limits. If, as in the case before us, 
the love of truth, and, by infallible consequence, the practical 
love of justice, may thus be exploded, by a formal sanction to 
the love of victory, and to a pertinacity regardless of right and 
•wrong, for the sake of producing professional expertness — 
what other virtue should we hesitate to sacrifice to the 
same object ? Thus explicitly tolerate and encourage in the 
pupil the contempt of one essential part of moral rectitude, and 
he may very justly laugh at his parents and tutors, when they 
are gravely enjoining him not to violate any of the rest. He 
may tell them, he apprehends it may be of service, in prose- 
cuting some of his designs, to throw aside one or two more of 
the articles commonly put by moralists among the essentials 
of virtue ; and that therefore, if they please, he had rather be 
excused listening to any canting lectures about integrity. And 
if the pure laws of moral excellence are to be deposed from 
their authority at all, we presume the benefit of the exemption 
ought not to be confined to the persons intended to figure at 
the bar. Some other employments, to which the bar profes- 
ses to be in deadly hostility, have also their pupils and their 
adepts, to whom the abrogation of the rigid standard of moral- 
ity will be exceedingly welcome and convenient ; and more 
'professions than these essays extend to, might have been 
treated of in the book, much to the edification of many acute 
and active young persons who are at all times training to 
them. — Let it be also considered in what a ludicrous predica- 
ment the theory of morals would be placed, in a family in 
which there were several sons, educating for different profes- 
sions, under the immediate care of their parents ; a case 
which our author regards as very desirable. One son, let it 
be supposed, is to be a lawyer, another a clerg^nnan. The 
young clergyman receives, in the sight and hearing of his 
brother, daily lessons on the indispensable duty of maintaining 
an ardent love of truth, and an honest candid simplicity, that 
admits every argument in its proper force, and would feel it a 
violation of principle— not of reason or decorum only, but of 



159 

conscientious principle — ^to defend error through obstinacy or 
the desire of victory. But the very spirit and conduct which 
the young clergyman is taught to regard as immoral, is by the 
same instructors, on the same day, in the same room, encour- 
aged in the young lawyer by a tolerance, which, if he acquits 
himself cleverly, will approach to applause. What are these 
virtuous instructors to do, or say, when the young lawyer 
laughs aloud at his brother while undergoing their moral lec- 
ture, and at them for making it ; or when their clerical pupil 
asks them, with ingenuous distress, what they really mean by 
the terms duty, morality, virtuous principle, and the like, seeing 
the pretended moral principle and its direct reverse are thus 
to be regarded as equally right 1 We can conceive no expe- 
dient for these worthy parents to adopt in such a case, but to 
dismiss at once the hypocrisy of an illusory diction, and frankly 
avow, that, as to the point of virtue and matter of conscience 
involved in the honesty enjoined on the clergyman, that is all 
a joke ; but that the plain thing is, there is a pi'ofessional pro- 
priety in the clergyman's cultivating the quality in question, 
and a professional convenience in the lawyer's despising it. 

The remainder of the essay briefly traces, without affecting 
any novelty of system, the proper course of a young clergy- 
man's studies, previously to his going to college, at college, 
and in his subsequent years. The French and English modes 
of eloquence are contrasted, and the latter, for very good rea- 
sons, preferred. There are some plain and useful suggestions 
of methods of discipline, by which the preacher should ac- 
complish himself as a good speaker. He is advised to study 
the pulpit manners of living preachers, not for so poor and ab- 
surd an object as the imitation of even the best of them, but to 
perfect his abstract idea of excellence by means of a consider- 
ation of various examples, better and worse, — for he recom- 
mends the student to hear some of the worst specimens as well 
as the best. Among the vilest sort, he says, " should be class- 
ed all those clerical coxcombs, who show that they are more 
intent on the nice management of a cambric handkerchief, or 
the display of a brilliant ring on their white hands, than upon 
the truths of the gospel, or the salvation of their auditors." 

He concludes by recommending the clergyman to acquaint 
himself accurately with the various modes of faith, worship, 
and religious establishment, in our own and other countries, in 
order to keep himself clear of bigotry and party violence, and 



-A 

160 edgewokth's professional education. 

to become qualified to act the part of a wise and benevolent 
moderator among others. 

On taking leave of the clerical profession, the author ap- 
pears to take a final and willing leave of religion. The word 
is admitted, indeed, two or three times, in enumerating the re- 
quisite instructions for the other professions ; it is introduced 
just as a notice that the subject has been duly disposed of al- 
ready ; and the writer appears glad to be thus left at full liber- 
ty to sketch the whole scheme of the education of the soldier, 
physician, lawyer, and statesman, without formally including 
this ungracious article. Such a thing as a solemn regard to 
the Governor of the world, and a rigorous adherence to his re- 
vealed laws, was deemed too trifling or too fanatical to be 
brought forward in each of the delineations of professional ex- 
cellence, as a purifier of motives, as a prescriber of ends, and a 
regulator in the choice of means, in every department of human 
action. It was not that the author was anxious to avoid repe- 
tition ; for most of the other requisite branches of instruction, 
and qualities of character, which have been illustrated and en- 
forced as indispensable or highly useful for one profession, are 
again fully insisted on with reference to another, and still 
another. Nor do we complain of this repetition. The value 
of what may be called a philosophical memory, of a most care- 
fully cultivated reasoning faculty, of intellectual and moral self- 
command, of a certain portion of learning and science, and of 
extensive knowledge of mankind, is obviously so great to all 
persons employed in important concerns, that the reader is 
willing and pleased to have them brought again in view, in or- 
der to its being shown in what manner they are indispensable 
in the education of the physician, or the lawyer, or the states- 
man. But, while such ample liberty is taken of enlarging 
again, in the successive divisions of the work, on several quali- 
fications which are not merely professional, but are indispen- 
sable to professional men, just because they are indispensable 
to all enlightened and useful men, we own we cannot help re- 
ceiving an unfavourable impression of the moral quality of a 
work, from seeing so careful an omission, (except in the part 
where it was unavoidably to be noticed as professionally ne- 
cessary,) of that one qualification of human character, which 
is the only secure basis of any virtue, and gives the purest 
lustre to every talent. 

The third essay is on Military and Naval Education. In 



161 

undertaking to sketch the proper education for the several 
professions, Mr. Edgeworth has omitted, apparently by design, 
to premise any observations tending to fix the moral estimate 
of each, for the assistance of those persons who are compelled 
to consult a delicate conscience in choosing the professions of 
their children. A few observations of this kind might not 
have been out of place, at the beginning of an essay on the 
method of making a soldier ; for such a conscience may per- 
versely raise a very strong question, whether it be right to 
destine a child to the occupation of slaying men ; and, happily, 
for our country, (or unhappily, as we believe it will be more 
according to the current moral principles of the times to say,) 
there are a certain proportion of people who cannot dismiss in 
practice their convictions of right, even though flattered by a 
presumption that their names, in their sons, might attain the 
splendour of military fame. We cannot be unaware how 
much offence there are persons capable of taking, at a plain 
description of war in the terms expressive of its chief opera- 
tion. And it is, to be sure, very hard that what has been be- 
dizened with the most magnificent epithets of every language, 
what has procured for so many men the idolatry of the world, 
what has crowned them with royal, imperial, and, according 
to the usual slang on the subject, "immortal" honours, what 
has obtained their apotheosis in history and poetry, — it is hard 
and vexatious that this same adored maker of emperors and 
demi-gods, should be reducible in literal truth of description to 
" the occupation of slaying men," and should therefore hold its 
honours at the mercy of the first gleam of sober sense that shall 
break upon mankind. But, however whimsical it may appear to 
recollect that the great business of war is slaughter, however 
deplorably low-minded it may appear to regard all the splen- 
dour of fame with which war has been blazoned, much in the 
same light as the gilding of that hideous idol to which the 
Mexicans sacrificed their human hecatombs, however foolish 
it may be thought to make a difficulty of consenting to merge 
the eternal laws of morality in the policy of states, and however 
presumptuous it may seem to condemn so many privileged, and 
eloquent, and learned, and reverend personages, as any and 
every war is sure to find its advocates, — it remains an obsti- 
nate fact, that there are some men of such perverted percep- 
tions as to apprehend that revenge, rage and cruelty, blood and 
fire, wounds, shrieks, groans, and death, with an infinite ac- 



162 

companiment of collateral crimes and miseries, are the ele- 
ments of what so many besotted mortals have worshipped in 
every age under the title of " glorious war," To be told that 
this is just the common-place with which dull and envious 
moralists have always railed against martial glory, will not in 
the slightest degree modify their apprehension of a plain mat- 
ter of fact. What signifies it whether moralists are dull, en- 
vious, and dealers in common-place, or not ? No matter who 
says it, nor from what motive ; the fact is, that war consists of 
the components here enumerated, and is therefore an infernal 
abomination, when maintained for any object, and according 
to any measures, not honestly within the absolute necessities 
of defence. In these justifying necessities, we include the 
peril to which another nation with perfect innocence on its 
part may be exposed, from the injustice of a third power ; as 
in the instance of the Dutch people, saved by Elizabeth from 
being destroyed by Spain. Now it needs not be said that 
wars, justifiable, on either side, on the pure principles of lawful 
defence, are the rarest things in history. Whole centuries all 
over darkened with the horrors of war may be explored from 
beginning to end, without perhaps finding two instances in 
which any one belligerent power can be pronounced to have 
adopted every precaution, and made every effort, concession, 
and sacrifice, required by Christian morality, in order to avoid 
war ; to have entered into it with extreme reluctance, to have 
entertained while prosecuting it, an ardent desire for peace, 
promptly seizing every occasion and expedient of conciliation ; 
to have sincerely forsworn all ambitious objects, to have 
spurned the foolish pride of not being the first to ofl^er peace, 
and to have ended the war the very first hour that it was found 
that candid negociation and moderate terms would be acceded 
to by the enemy. It is certain, at least, that the military histo- 
ry of this country is not the record where such examples are to 
be sought. But it may be presumed, we suppose, that those 
parents whose moral principles are to be of any use to their 
children, w ill abhor the idea to their sons being employed in 
any war that has not the grounds of justification here enumer- 
ated. But then, in order to their feeling themselves warranted 
to educate those sons for the business of war, they must have 
a firm assurance that the moral principles of their nation, or its 
government, are about to become so transformed, that there 
shall be, during the lives of their children, no war which shall 



EDGEWORTH S PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 163 

not, on the part of their country, stand within the justifying 
conditions that we have specified. And let a conscientious 
parent seriously reflect, whether there be any good cause for 
entertaining such an assurance. But, unless he has such an 
assurance, he gives his son to be shaped and finished, like a 
sword or a bayonet in a Birmingham manufactory, to be em- 
ployed in deeds of slaughter, righteous or iniquitous, just as 
may be determined by the persons in power, to whom he must 
sell his services unconditionally, and whose determinations 
may probably enough be guided by the most depraved princi- 
ples ; while there is this unfortunate difference between the 
youth and the sword, that the youth who is thus becoming an 
instrument of slaughter, cannot still be divested of the ac- 
countableness of a moral agent. A melancholy case ! that the 
father should have cause to deplore the impossibility of his 
son's being at once an accomplished soldier and an idiot. — If 
a time shall come when the nation and its government shall 
manifest, with any thing like a sufficient security for perma- 
nently manifesting, half as much moderation as they have 
shown pride and ambition, and half as decided an attachment 
to peace as they have shown violent passion for war, during 
the last half century, then the parent's conscientious scruples 
may be turned from the general question of the morality of the 
military employment, to the particular considerations of its 
probable influence on his son's character, and its dangers to 
his life ; that is to say, if all such considerations, and the pro- 
fession itself, are not by that time set aside by the final cessa- 
tion of war. In the mean time, conscientious parents may do 
well to resign the ambition of training sons to martial glory, to 
those fathers — a plentiful complement — who will laugh at the 
sickly conscience which scruples to devote a youth to the pro- 
fession of war, on the ground that the wars in which he shall 
be employed may be iniquitous. 

We are not sure that Mr. Edgeworth would not join in this 
laugh, as he makes very light of whatever morality has to do 
in the concern. He contemplates with the utmost coolness, 
not only the possibility that his young hero may be employed 
in an unjust cause, (in which case he is here recommended 
to take no responsibility on his conscience, but mind his pro- 
per business of killing and slaying,) but the certainty that the 
prescribed education for a military life will powerfully tend to 
promote and perpetuate a state of war. He says, 



164 edgeworth's professional EDtrCATIOJr. 

•' After quitting his academy, it is scarcely possible that a young mai?,, 
who has acquired all the knowledge, and caught all the enthusiasm ne- 
cessary for his profession, should not ardently wish for war, that he may 
have opportunities of distinguishing himself. Martial enthusiasm and a 
humane philosophical love of peace are incompatible, therefore military 
pupils should not be made philosophers, or they cease to be soldiers, and 
how then can we expect to be defended ?" — P. 194. 

Thus it is plainly asserted, that a rightly conducted milita- 
ry education will inspire its subjects with an ardent passion 
against the nation's being at peace. Now let it be considered, 
that of the numerous youths to be thus educated, and there- 
fore inspired with this passion, a considerable proportion will 
be sons of the nobility, who form a branch of the legislature, 
a kind of permanent council to the king ; that another large 
proportion are from the families of the prodigious number of 
executive functionaries of the state, through all their grada- 
tions ; and that a very numerous supply is from the families 
of wealth and influence throughout the country, whose direct 
or collateral relations have seats in the House of Commons : 
,let all this be reflected on but five minutes ; let it be consid- 
ered that the younger sons of the nobility, when thus educa- 
ted, must be provided for at all events, even if they were not 
burning for martial enterprize ; that in the descending ranks 
of family and wealth, who send their representatives to the 
House of Commons, the modern habits of living have created 
certain necessities very powerfully tending to influence the 
fathers of these young heroes to promote in that House, in 
person, or by their friends, such national schemes as will fur- 
nish employment for their sons ; and that the generous ambi- 
tion, as it will be called, of these high-spirited young men, 
always therefore the favourites and idols of their families and 
connexions, will probably have no little direct influence on the 
volitions of their parliamentary relatives. Let any man think 
of all this influence, acting in reinforcement of that horror of 
peace which may prevail as much in the government and a 
great part of the nation another half century, as it has prevail- 
ed during the last, and say whether there can be any better 
security for a constant national disposition to a state of war. 
The nation is to stand, therefore, in this desirable predica- 
ment ; that the grand expedient for defending it against ene- 
mies, is to be most exactly calculated to set it continually on 
finding and making enemies. 



EDGEWORTH S PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 165 

Such are the natural effects of our author's scheme of mili- 
tary education, according to his own statement of its tendency, 
on which statement he appears not to have the slightest idea 
that any one can be so wrong-headed as to found an objection 
to such an education. It is no business of ours, in this place, 
to enter into a dull and useless discussion whether it be prac- 
ticable to devise a scheme of education which should qualify 
young men to be efficient soldiers, whenever duty should appear 
to summon them to act in that capacity, and should equally, at 
the same time, cultivate all the moral principles that would 
inspire a detestation of war. But it is our business, as Chris- 
tian censors and monitors, to say, that, if this is not practica- 
ble, no parent can educate his son for war, without a complete 
virtual abjuration of Christianity ; as it is obviously impossi- 
ble for him at once to be faithful to the laws of an institution 
which commands every thing gentle, pacific, preventive of 
strife and suffering, and repressive of ambition, and deliberate- 
ly to excite in his son an ardent passion for that employment, 
of which the grand elements are fury, anguish, and destruc- 
tion. The laws of this institution are fundamental and abso- 
lute, forming the primary obligation on all its believers, and 
reducing all other rules of action to find their place as they 
can, in due subordination, — or to find no place at all. No 
arguments in favour of this military passion are to be allowed 
from such topics as national glory, unless it is to be maintain- 
ed, that Christianity has provided for a suspension of its own 
principles, in favour of that pride and ambition generally im- 
plied in this phrase. And if it has made an exception in fa- 
vour of these, why should it not be equally indulgent to any 
other depraved feelings connected with other kinds of corrupt 
interest ? that is, why has it an existence, as a moral author- 
ity ? It had better not exist at all, if it were an institution 
which enforced gentleness and quietness on mankind, just as 
if to give the more destructive effect to an exception sanction- 
ing martial madness to harass and consume them. Truly it 
would deserve all the contempt which such persons as our 
author feel for it, if it were a system maintaining itself rigidly 
obligatory on those whose refined moral sensibility yields to 
admit the obligation, but not obligatory on those whose fierce 
passions disdain its control ; that is, a thing of which the 
obligation depends on whether men are willing to acknow- 
ledge it or not. 



166 edgeworth's professional education. 

We have mentioned what is called national glory, as this is 
one of the chief idols which men of war are always required 
to worship, and to which there is hardly any thing in the whole 
moral system which they will not be justified, by the general- 
ity of politicians and moralists in these times, for sacrificing. 
But national defence is Mr. Edgeworth's immediate plea, in 
justification of a mode of training which must deprave the 
moral sentiments of a considerable portion of our youth : 
** How can we" otherwise, he asks, " expect to be defended ]" 
We have already said, in reply to this, How can we, at this 
rate, be ever free from perils, created by our own foolish dis- 
position to seize or make occasions for war ? But we add 
another question of still graver import : — On the supposition 
that there is a righteous Governor of the world, how can we 
expect to be defended, if we industriously promote, in the minds 
of a large and the most active proportion of our youth, a spirit 
which he abominates, and the national conduct naturally re- 
sulting from which he has threatened to visit with punishment? 
This question, indeed, it must be acknowledged, can perti- 
nently be addressed only to the " fanatics ;" as we have had 
extensive opportunity of observing, that the persons so reput- 
ed alone show any real practical recognition of a divine go- 
vernment in speculating on the policy of states. It is to be 
hoped that all these fanatics, in consistency with their faith 
in such a government, beware of soliciting the demon of mar- 
tial ambition into the minds of their sons ; convinced that no 
possible combination of circumstances under heaven can sanc- 
tify a spirit the reverse of their religion, and that, as a gene- 
ral law, a state in danger has just so much the greater cause 
to despair of being defended, as it prepares its defence in a 
spirit careless of divine injunctions, and scornful of a reliance 
on Providence. Till the right spirit shall find its way into 
nations and governments, it remains to be seen what that Pro- 
vidence will suffer to be effected among them by that valorous 
ambition which Mr. Edgeworth wishes to inflame, and all the 
glory of which — except its success, and its efficacy to annihi- 
late national danger — has richly crowned this country during 
the last half century. 

If the question were still urged. But how can a nation be 
defended ? it may be answered at once, that a nation Avhose 
piety and justice are approved by heaven, (and how is a nation 
of an opposite character to have any security of being defend- 



167 

ed, whatever be its ostensible means ?) such a nation may be 
defended by the divine agency giving efficacy to the operation 
of such numbers, such military apparatus, and such resources 
of science, as the purely defensive spirit would always keep 
partly prepared, and would soon make ready for action, in an 
enlightened nation, conscious of having the most valuable pos- 
sessions to lose. 

Our author's morality appears on the same level, in the 
doctrine that it is not for military men, except those of the 
very highest rank, to form any judgment of their own on the 
right or wrong of the cause in which they are to be employed. 
That is, in the one employment which is the most awful on 
earth, that of inflicting death on human beings in the mass, 
men are not to consider their actions as of consequence enough 
for the cognizance of conscience ; they may divest themselves 
of the inconvenience of moral accountableness, till they return 
to the solemn functions of buying and selling, and the ordinary 
proprieties of life. In the civil economy of society, the life of 
an individual is regarded as of such importance, that it must 
not be touched without a most grave and punctilious process ; 
witnesses are attested and rigorously examined, juries are 
sworn and charged, laws are explained, learned judges pre- 
side, and are even allowed by their office to assume in a cer- 
tain degree the character of advocates for the accused ; and 
should any one of all these persons concerned, be proved to 
have acted in the process as a man divested of moral respon- 
sibility, his character is blasted for ever. But let an ambi- 
tious despot, or a profligate ministry, only give out the word 
that we must be at war with this or the other nation, — and 
then a man who has no personal complaint against any living 
thing of that nation, who may not be certain it has conmiitted 
any real injury against his own nation or government, nay, 
who possibly may be convinced by facts against which he 
cannot shut his eyes, that his own nation or government is 
substantially in the wrong, then this man, under the sanction 
of the word war^ may, with a conscience entirely unconcern- 
ed, immediately go and cut down human beings as he would 
cut down a copse. It is nothing to him if the people he is to 
co-operate in attacking are peaceful, free, and happy, and that 
this very freedom and happiness may have been the cause of 
the war, by exciting the malignity of the aggressor. The 
peaceful valleys and hills of Switzerland can be no more sacred 



168 edgeworth's professional education, 

in his view, than the borders of the most arrogant and mali- 
cious rival. The officers who invaded and subdued that coun- 
try were, all but the commander-in-chief, as virtuously employ- 
ed as those who fell in attempting to defend it. And, admit- 
ting that the popular resistance in Spain is really an effort of 
a long-degraded people to obtain liberty, the invaders, except- 
ing perhaps the marshal dukes, are as honourably occupied as 
their opponents ; for they are destroying men and desolating 
the country, under the modest forbearance, enjoined by our 
moralist, to arrogate to themselves a right of judging of the 
merits of the cause. And should they receive orders from 
their superiors to perpetrate the barbarities of Herod, they have 
only to obey, and exult in their exemption from moral respon- 
sibility. The exemption goes this length, and every length, 
or it cannot be proved to exist at all ; for if an accountable - 
ness is to take place at some point, and the man's own judg- 
ment is to decide where, he will be compelled to begin his 
examination, and therefore to acknowledge his accountable- 
ness, at the very first moral question that can be put concern- 
ing his employment. 

The young soldier from Mr. Edgeworth's school is not to 
be eagerly set on duelling, but neither is he in all cases to 
decline that honourable practice. " The best character," he 
says, " a young man can establish on going into the army, is 
that of being determined to fight in a proper cause, but averse 
to quarrel for trifles." He strongly recommends fencing as 
a part of an officer's education. 

" It might again revive the custom among gentlemen, of fighting duels 
with swords instead of pistols: a custom, which would at least diminish 
the number of duellists, by confining them to a certam class in society. 
Gentlemen would then be in some measure protected from the insolence 
of uneducated temerity, and every ill-bred upstart would not find himself 
upon a footing with his superior because he can fire a pistol, or dares to 
stand a shot. If any distinction of ranks is to be supported, if any idea 
of subordination is to be maintained in a country, and what nation can 
exist without these, education must mark the boundaries, and maintain 
the privileges of the different orders. The honour and the life of an 
officer and a senator, and that of a mere idle man of the town, ought not 
to be put on the same level, nor should their differences be adjusted by 
one and the same appeal to the trigger." P. 152. 

This expedient for preserving so valuable a privilege to the 
better sort, for keeping duels a strictly genteel amusement, 



EDGEWORTH S PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 169 

would prove ineffectual ; for these " idle men of the town" 
would, in spite of their description, be soon stimulated to qua- 
lify themselves in the art, on which they found their equality 
with the " officers and senators" was to depend ; and some of 
them, of the true bravo species, \vould soon acquire the power 
to overawe their pretended superiors. Mr. Edge worth might 
know that some of these men of the town practise shooting at 
a mark, expressly in preparation for "affairs of honour," with 
as much assiduity as would finish them in the use of the 
sword. Under the appearance of idle men of the town, there 
will always, in the metropolis, be a class of keen desperate 
adventurers by profession, who regard what Mr. Edgeworth 
may call "their superiors," as their game ; and so long as 
gentlemen of the senatorian, or whatever other dignified sort, 
choose, in defiance of morality and law, to maintain the prac- 
tice of" appeal " to either the " trigger" or the sword, they 
will deservedly be at the mercy of the more unerring pistols 
or swords of these formidable men. As to the supposed higher 
value of the " honour and the life of the officer or senator," 
surely the man is the best judge himself what the one or the 
other is worth ; he is not obliged to appraise them in a pistol- 
ling match with " every ill-bred upstart, or idle man of the 
town," and, if he chooses to do it, it is of course because he 
judges they are things fit for such a traffic. And, truly, what- 
ever price they might have borne before, he cannot well esti- 
mate them too meanly by the time that he has measured his 
ground with his worthless antagonist, since community in 
crime is the grand equalizer in degradation. By the time he 
has consented to place himself in that situation, his " honour," 
at any rate, is hardly worth the trouble of a preference of one 
w^eapon to another, and his " life " is worth — mentioning in 
to-morrow's newspaper as a thing that went out in a gentle- 
manly style. In the name, then, of that liberty, so much fa- 
voured by the government and tribunals of this Christian 
country, of violating in this point morality and law, let not the 
man be forced to take the pains of learning an additional art in 
order to dispose of his couple of trifles, " honour and life," 
which can be disposed of with less trouble in the mode now 
in fashion. 

The reader will be somewhat surprised to find that this de- 
termination to fight duels on all proper occasions, is to coa- 
lesce, in the young soldier's mind, with a religion which it 



170 edgewokth's professional education. 

shall be worth his while to maintain with an equal constancy 
of determination. We are not certain, even, whether the 
same weapons are not, in the last resort, to be employed ; 
since "all interference with his religious sentiments, whether 
by ridicule or remonstrance," is represented as such "an in- 
fringement of his rights and his independence," as we should 
suppose he will be bound to resent with lead or steel. 

" As a young officer will early mix with varieties of dissipated company, 
his relifrious principles should not trust for their defence to any of those 
outworks which wit can demolish ; he should not be early taught to be 
scrupulous or strict in the observance of trifling forms ; his important du- 
ties, and his belief in the essential tenets of his religion, should not rest up- 
on these slight foundations, lest, if they be overthrown, the whole super- 
structure should fall. When his young companions perceive that he is not 
precise or punctilious, but sincere and firm in his belief; when they see 
that he avoids all controversy with others, and considers all interference 
with his own religious sentiments, whether by ridicule or remonstrance, as 
an infringement of his rights and his independence ; he will not only be 
left unmolested in his tenets, but he will command general respect. It is 
of the utmost importance that the early religious impressions made on the 
mind of a soldier should not be of a gloomy or dispiriting sort ; they 
should be connected with hope, not with fear, or they will tend to make 
him cowardly instead of brave. Those who believe that they are secure 
of happiness hereafter, if to the best of their power they live and die doing 
their duty, will certainly meet danger, and if necessary, death, with more 
courage than they can ever do who are oppressed and intimidated by su- 
perstitious doubts and horrors, terrors which degrade man, and which are 
inconsistent with all ideas of the goodness and beneficence of God." — 
P. 143. 

It should seem to be conveyed, in this piece of instruction, 
that it is in some certain degree at the option of religious teach- 
ers what they shall inculcate as religion ; and that therefore, 
in their religious instructions to their military pupils, they can 
considerably accommodate to the purpose of producing bra- 
very. We may also learn that a religion which involves " ter- 
rors " needs not be believed by any of us, soldiers, authors, or 
critics, any testimony to the contrary in the Bible notwith- 
standing. As to the phrase " if they live and die doing their 
duty," nothing can be more indefinite, or even equivocal ; for, 
according to our author, a military man may die doing his duty 
though he dies in a duel, or, as far as we see, if he dies in the 
act of sacking a harmless town, which some atrocious tyrant, 
or tyrant's tool, has sworn to annihilate. 

After so much more than enough on the moral complexion 
of this long essay on military education, there needs but very 



edgeworth's professional education. 171 

few words on its other qualities. In common with the others, 
it has a certain defect, very sensibly felt by a reader of indif- 
ferent memory ; that of not prominently marking the several 
stages and topics in the scheme. But this perhaps could not 
have been remedied by any other means than a formal divis- 
ion into a number of sections with distinct titles and argu- 
ments. The multifarious assemblage of precepts and illustra- 
tions includes, we should suppose, almost all the expedients 
most conducive to excite the spirit and finish the accomplish- 
ments of a soldier. Many directions are given for preparing 
the young hero, from his infancy, for the toils and privations 
of his future service. 

The discipline of stripes must never be applied to him, of 
whatever perversity or mischief he may be guilty. Every 
thing must be done by an appeal to his pride, which passion is 
to be promoted and stimulated in every possible way, as the 
sovereign virtue of the military character ; nor is any pre- 
scription given for transmuting it into the opposite Christian 
virtue just at the extreme moment when he is finally laying 
down his arms, if he should then be apprehensive that this mil- 
itary character may be an uncouth garb in which to appear in 
the other world. The proper discipline for creating courage 
is pointed out ; amusements bearing some relation to the ope- 
ration of war are suggested ; it is advised that the boy be in- 
duced to employ himself sometimes in familiar practical me- 
chanics ; be early made master of the terms and elements of 
mathematics ; be carefully trained to an accurate use of his 
eyes, in order to judge of distances and relative magnitudes ; 
be taught drawing ; learn some of the modern languages, but 
not expend much of his time on Latin and Greek. He is to be 
made conversant with the lives of warriors, and even the sto- 
ries of chivalry. But the book of mightiest inspiration is the 
Iliad, of which it was indispensably necessary to mention yet 
once more, that it sent " Macedonia's madman and the 
Swede," to draw glorious lines of blood and devastation across 
certain portions of the surface of the earth, beckoned on by the 
Homeric ghost of Achilles. The character of this amiable 
hero has been "fated," it seems, like those of the Christian 
apostles and martyrs, to meet with detractors among the base- 
minded moderns. 

'* Some modern writers have been pleased to call Achilles a mad butch- 
er, wading in carnage j but all our love for the arts of peace, and all oui 



172 

respect for that humane philosophy which proscribes war, cannot induce 
us to join in such brutal abuse, such unseemly degradation of the greatest 
mihtary hero upon poetic record ;" 

and there follows a portion of useful composition on the "he- 
roic beauties in his character ;" in answer to all which it is 
sufficient to ask, But icas he not, after all, " a mad butcher 
wading in carnage ?" There are many excellent observations 
on an officer's conduct in war, on the proper combination, 
while he is a subaltern, of subordination with independence of 
character, on presence of mind, on the mode of attaching sol- 
diers, and inspiring them with confidence, and on that vigour 
of good sense which, disdaining to be confined to the princi- 
ples of any school of war, can adapt every operation pointedly 
to the immediate state of the circumstances. The whole es- 
say is enlivened by numerous historical examples, selected in 
general with great judgment and felicity. 

The remaining Essays are on the education for the Medical 
Profession, for the duties of Country Gentlemen, for the pro- 
fession of the Law, and for Public Life, with a short conclud- 
ing chapter on the education of a Prince. They involve such 
a multiplicity of particulars, as to be beyond the power of analy- 
sis, had we any room left to attempt it. Nor is there any 
bold novelty of general principles that can be stated as per- 
vading the whole mass ; unless, indeed, we may cite, as a 
novelty, the author's detestation of the political profligacy and 
low intrigues of what are called public men. This appears in 
many parts of the book, and is conspicuously displayed in the 
Essay on the education of men intended for Public Life. And 
it is quite time it should be displayed by every honest man, 
since the public mind habitually leans to a forgetfulness or a 
tolerance of those vices of public men, to which the public in- 
terests are made a sacrifice. Thus far is well ; but when 
our author proceeds confidently to remedy all these evils by 
means of the inculcation of pride, honour, and magnanimity, 
(which is only another name for pride, when it is found in 
such company,) we cannot help wondering through what pre- 
ternatural splitting of his faculties into a very intelligent part 
and a very whimsical one, it has happened that the same in- 
dividual has been in many directions an excellent observer 
and thinker, but in others a deplorable visionary. 



BEITISH STATESMEN, 173 



VI. 



BRITISH STATESMEN 



Lives of British Statesmen. By John Macdiaemid, Esq,, 
Author of an Inquiry into the System of National Defence in 
Great Britain, and of an Inquiry into the Principles of Sub- 
ordination. 

If M^e have not learnt to feel for statesmen, as such, a suffi- 
cient share of that reverential respect which pronounces their 
names with awe, which stands amazed at the immensity of 
their wisdom, which looks up to them as the concentrated rea- 
son of the human species, which trembles to insinuate or to 
hear insinuated against them the slightest suspicion of obliqui- 
ty of understanding or corruption of moral principle, and 
which regards it as quite a point of religion to defend their re- 
putation, it has not been that we have not received many 
grave instructions and rebukes on this head from much better 
men. A hundred times it has been repeated to us, that a pe- 
culiar and extraordinary genius is requisite to constitute a 
statesman ; that men, who by situation and office are conver- 
sant wdth great concerns, acquire a dignity and expansion of 
mind ; that those who can manage the affairs of nations prove 
themselves by the fact itself to be great men ; that their ele- 
vated position gives them an incomparably clearer and more 
comprehensive view of national subjects than is to be attained 
by us on the low level of private life ; that we ought, in defer- 
ence to them, to repress the presumption of our understand- 
ings ; that, in short, it is our duty to applaud or be silent. 

With a laudable obsequiousness we have often tried to con- 
form ourselves to our duty, at least as prescribed in the latter 
part of this alternative ; and we have listened respectfully to 
long panegyrics on the sagacity, fortitude, and disinterested- 
ness of the chief actors and advisers in state affairs, and to in- 
culcations of the gratitude due to men who will thus conde- 



174 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

scend, in their lofty stations, (which at the same time it is pre- 
sumed they can claim to hold for no other purpose,) to toil and 
care for us the vulgar mass of mankind. Presently these lau- 
datory and hortatory strains would soften into an elegiac 
plaintiveness, bewailing the distresses of men in high situa- 
tions in the state. The pathetic song has deplored the op- 
pressive labours of thought required in forming their schemes, 
their cruel exposure to the persecutions of an adverse party, 
the difficulty of preserving harmony of operation in a wide and 
complex system involving many men and many dispositions, 
their anxiety in providing for the wants of the state, the fre- 
quent failure of their best concerted measures, their sleepless 
nights, their aching heads, and their sufferings from the un- 
grateful reproaches of the people. Here our impatience has 
overcome our good resolutions, and we have been moved to re- 
ply. We have said. Is not the remedy for all these sorrows 
at all times in their reach ] They can quit their stations and 
all the attendant distresses whenever they please, in behalf of 
other men who are waiting, eager almost to madness, to ob- 
tain their share of all the vexations you are commiserating. 
But while you are so generously deploring the hardships of 
their situation, they are anxiously devising every possible con- 
trivance to secure themselves in possession of it, and nothing 
less than the power that put them in can wrench them out. 
It is vastly reasonable to be requiring lenient judgments on 
the conduct, and respectful sympathy for the feelings, of public 
men, while we see with what a violent passion power and sta- 
tion are sought, with what desperate grappling claws of iron 
they are retained, and with what grief and mortification they 
are lost. It might be quite time enough, we should think, to 
commence this strain of tenderness, when in order to fill the 
places of power and emolument it has become necessary to 
drag by force retiring virtue and modest talent from private 
life, and to retain them in those situations by the same com- 
pulsion, in spite of the most earnest wishes to retreat, excited 
by delicacy of conscience, and a disgust at the pomp of state. 
So long as men are pressing as urgently into the avenues of 
place and power as ever the genteel rabble of the metropolis 
have pushed and crowded into the play-house to see the Aew 
actor, and so long as a most violent conflict is maintained be- 
tween those who are in power and those who want to supplant 
them, we think statesmen form by eminence the class of per- 



BRITISH STATESMEN. 175 

sons, to whose characters both the contemporary examiner and 
the historian are not only authorized, but in duty bound, to ad- 
minister justice in its utmost rigour, without one particle of 
extenuation. While forcing their way toward offices in the 
state, and while maintaining the possession once acquired, they 
are apprised, or might and should be apprised, of the nature of 
the responsibility, and it is certain they are extremely well ap- 
prised of the privileges. They know that the public welfare 
depends, in too great a degree, on their conduct, and that the 
people have a natural instinctive prejudice in favour of their 
leaders, and are disposed to confide to the utmost extent. They 
know that a measure of impunity unfortunate for the public is 
enjoyed by statesmen, their very station affording the means 
both of concealment and defence for their delinquencies. They 
know that in point of emolument they are more than paid from 
the labours of the people for any services they render; and 
that they are not bestowing any particular favour on the coun- 
try by holding their offices, as there are plenty of men, about 
as able and as good as themselves, ready to take their places 
if they would abdicate them. When to all this is added the 
acknowledged fact that the majority of this class of men have 
trifled with their high responsibility, and taken criminal advan- 
tage of their privileges, we can have no patience to hear of any 
claims for special indulgence of charity, in reading and judging 
the actions of statesmen. 

On the ground of morality in the abstract, separately from 
any consideration of the effect of his representations, the 
biographer of statesmen is bound to a very strict application of 
the rules of justice, since these men constitute, or at least be- 
long to, the uppermost class of the inhabitants of the earth. 
They have stronger inducements arising from situation, than 
other men, to be solicitous for the rectitude of their conduct ; 
their station has the utmost advantage for commanding the as- 
sistance of whatever illumination a country contains ; they 
see on the large scale the effect of all the grand principles of 
action ; they make laws for the rest of mankind, and they 
direct the execution of justice. If the eternal laws of morality 
are to be applied Avith a soft and lenient hand in the trial and 
judgment of such an order of men, it will not be worth while 
to apply them at all to the subordinate classes of mankind ; 
as a morality that exacts but little where the means and the 
responsibility are the greatest, would betray itself to contempt 



176 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

by pretending to sit in solemn judgment on the humbler sub- 
jects of its authority. The laws of morality should operate, 
like those of nature, in the most palpable manner on the 
largest substances. 

Another reason for the rigid administration of justice to the 
characters of men that have been high in the state, is to 
secure the utility of history, or rather to preserve it from be- 
coming to the last degree immoral and noxious. For since 
history is almost entirely occupied with the actions of this class 
of men, and for the much greater part with their vices and 
their crimes, and the calamitous consequences, it is easy to see 
that a softened mode of awarding justice to these characters 
will turn the whole force of history to the effect of depraving 
our moral principles, by partially conciliating both our feelings 
and judgments to those hateful courses of action, of which we 
are already very much too tolerant in consequence of being 
from our childhood familiarized to the view of them, in every 
account of the past and present state of the world. And in 
this way we are inclined to think that history has actually 
been, on the whole, the enemy of morality. Its readers will 
have too light an impression of the atrocity of great crimes 
and great criminals. Great crimes constitute so large a pro- 
portion of the historian's materials for constructing splendid 
exhibitions, that if he does not insensibly become almost par- 
tial to them, as a general does to a band of the most cruel 
savages whose ferocity he has repeatedly employed to obtain 
his victories, his hatred admits at least a certain softening of 
literary interest ; and in many a glowing description of enor- 
mous wickedness, we fancy we see the hand of the painter or 
poet rather than the moral censor. Artful combinations of 
odious circumstances, epithets to aggravate each indignant 
line, eloquence of execration, are possibly not spared; but we 
still find ourselves rather invited as spectators of a splendid 
tragedy, than summoned as jurors in a solemn court of justice. 
The diminution or modification, in the historian's mind, of the 
abhorrence of crimes, in consequence of the benefit which he 
derives from them as striking materials for his work, aids the 
operation of any other cause which may tend to render him 
indulgent to the actor of them. And often the great criminal 
has had some one virtue, or at least some very showy faults, 
adapted, in the historian's view, to relieve and even extenuate 
the account of his wickedness ; he might have munificence, a 



BRITISH STATESMEN. 177 

love of letters, a very lofty kind of ambition, or what a lax 
morality would term a liberal love of pleasure ; at any rate, he 
probably had talents, and this is perhaps after all the most 
seductive of the distinctions by which a bad man can dazzle 
our judgments. The historian, besides, acquires a kind of 
partiality for an eminent actor in the times and transactions 
which he describes, from even the circumstance of being, in 
imagination, so long in his company. In prosecuting his 
work, he returns to this person each morning, for weeks, 
months, or even years ; the interest of the literary labour 
consists in following this person through the whole train of 
his proceedings ; the disposition for quarrelling with him 
gradually subsides ; the odious moral features are familiarized 
to the view ; while perhaps the conviction of his great attain- 
ments, and the wonder at his achievements, are progressively 
augmented ; extenuations Suggest themselves, and occasion- 
ally even partial claims on applause ; the writer becomes a 
kind of participator in the activity and importance of the trans- 
actions, while he is clear of all the guilt ; and thus by degrees 
the rigour of justice is forgotten, and flagrant iniquity is ex- 
hibited with so little prominence of turpitude, that it depends 
very much on the moral state of the reader's own mind, 
whether he shall regard it with indulgence or detestation. 
We shall not wonder at the bad morality of history, if we com- 
bine this view of the injurious effect of the historian's studies 
on his mind, with the consideration that the eminent historians 
of antiquity were pagans, and the most distinguished ones of 
modern times very near the moral level of paganism, by 
means of their irreligion. 

It is, again, very desirable that a rigid justice should be 
maintained in delineating and recording the characters and 
actions of statesmen, because it is in the nature of the people, 
in all countries, to feel a kind of superstitious veneration for 
those who are so much above them as to have the command of 
their public affairs. Place men, of whatever sort, in power, 
and there will need no burning fiery furnace to intimidate 
their fellow-citizens into reverential prostration. On the 
mere strength of their situation they shall gain credit to 
almost all they pretend, and acknowledgment of right to all 
they arrogate ; fine talents and fine qualities in abundance 
shall be ascribed to them ; and the crowd shall look up with 
awe to the beings that can make speeches and enactments, 



178 BKITISH STATESMEN. 

appointments and imposts, treaties and wars. Or even if the 
deficiency of integrity and abilities is so notorious as to force 
a reluctant conviction on the people, the high station secures 
a certain tolerance which a man in humbler life must not too 
confidently expect for vices and incapacity. It is matter of 
great difficulty and effort for these men to sin away the whole 
stock of credit and partiality, which sounding titles and elevat- 
ed stations have raised for them in the popular mind. Even 
our pride is in their favour ; our pride as respecting ourselves 
is unwilling to believe, that we are all passing our lives in sub- 
missive homage to persons not at all our betters in wisdom or 
morals ; and our pride of national comparison feels it abso- 
lutely necessary to maintain, that we are wise enough to put 
as much wisdom at our head as any people in the world can 
boast. — We mean this as a description not of the English 
nation in particular ; it is the case of every nation. 

Now this superstitious respect for persons possessing con- 
sequence in the state is injurious to the people in two ways ; 
it deteriorates their moral principles, and it endangers their 
political condition. If statesmen, as a class, had been proved 
by experience to be the purest of all saints, then this excess of 
reverence for them might be a most salutary sentiment, as re- 
inforcing the attractions and authority of virtue by all the in- 
jfluence held over our minds by these its noblest examples. 
But it has been found till now, or at least till very lately, that 
statesmen in general deem it necessary to keep in their posses- 
sion about the same quantity of vice as their neighbours ; and 
the respect which the people feel for the men, on account of 
their station, prevents the just degree of contempt or abhor- 
rence for the vice. All the palliation which vice acquires, as 
beheld in connexion with respected personages, it is sure 
afterwards to retain as viewed in itself; the principles there- 
fore by which its noxiousness should be esteemed are de- 
praved ; and all who are disposed to like it will gladly take the 
privilege of committing it at the same reduced expense of con- 
science and character, as their superiors. In every commu- 
nity the estimate of the evil of immorality, in the abstract, 
will infallibly be reduced nearly to the level of that opinion of 
its evil which is entertained respecting it, as committed by the 
most privileged class of that community. 

As to the danger which threatens the political condition of 
the people, no illustration can well make it plainer. If states- 



^ BRITISH STATESMEN. 179 

men were an importation of celestials, partaking in no degree 
of the selfishness and perversity of mortal men, it would be a 
delightful thing for us to throw into their hands an unlimited 
power over all the great concerns of a nation, and prosecute 
our individual purposes, and indulge our tastes and domestic 
affections, in perfect security that all would go right in the 
general affairs of the nation. Or if the constitution of things 
were such, that the interest of the leaders were necessarily 
coincident entirely with the interest of the people, it might be 
safe to dismiss the anxiety of vigilance under the presiding 
direction of even a party of mere human creatures ; as the 
passengers in a ship give themselves very tranquilly to their 
amusements or their sleep, because they are certain the offi- 
cial conductors of the vessel have necessarily just the same 
interest in its safety as themselves. But it is obvious, that in- 
numerable occasions will present themselves to men in power, 
of serving their own interests quite distinctly from those of the 
people, and decidedly to their detriment. Indeed, the personal 
interests of these men are necessarily opposed to the grand 
popular interest of freedom itself, insomuch that no people 
ever long maintained their internal liberty, who did not main- 
tain it by precaution against the very statesmen they were 
obliged to employ. Every thing that ascertains the freedom 
of the people necessarily fixes the bounds to the power of 
those who are placed over them ; and it would be requiring 
too much of human nature, to expect that men, whom ambi- 
tion, for the most part, has raised to the stations of power, 
should not regard with an evil eye these limitations to the 
scope of their predominant passion, and consider them as ob- 
stacles which they are to remove or surmount if they can. 
And their high station, as we have observed, affords them 
many facilities for concealing and protecting themselves, in the 
prosecution of measures for the gradual subversion of liberty ; 
in which course and for which purpose very many statesmen, 
according to the testimony of history, have employed the pow- 
ers and resources vested, and the confidence reposed in them, 
by the nation, as the persons officially engaged to guard its 
interests. Now the thing which beyond all other things 
would be desired by men with such designs, is, the prevalence 
in the public mind of a blind veneration for statesmen, that 
attributes to them rectitude and talents of too high an order to 
be inspected and scrutinized and controlled by any profane 



180 BRITISH STATESMEN. 



*■, 



arrogance of the people. Under favour of this state of the 
popular mind, they have but to make pompous professions of 
patriotism, and act in tolerable concert, and they may obtain 
unlimited confidence while they are both wasting the imme- 
diate resources of the country, and assiduously sapping away 
all that which can enable each individual inhabitant to say, I 
am no man's property or slave. It is the duty therefore of all 
who wish well to mankind, to remonstrate against this perni- 
cious infatuation ; and it is our official duty to represent that 
the biographical flatterers of statesmen are among the most 
wicked perverters of the public mind. 

Mr. Macdiarmid is not of this class. His language is per- 
haps a little too indulgent, occasionally, to meet our ideas of 
the severe duties of the office he has chosen ; but we regard 
him on the whole as a faithful and impartial biographer. He 
never gets into such a current of panegyric that he cannot for 
his life stop to notice a fault. He appears in a considerable 
degree the friend of several of the eminent men whose actions 
he records ; but he is such a friend as, if he could have been 
contemporary and acquainted with any of them, would not 
have withheld those candid animadversions, which might have 
contributed to make them greater benefactors of the times, 
and greater ornaments to history. He does not profess to 
present their characters in any new light, nor to have drawn 
facts and anecdotes from rare and unpublished records ; but he 
thought it might not be an unacceptable service to the public 
to give a somewhat more ample, and a more minute and per- 
sonal sketch, of these distinguished men, than can be found, or 
could with propriety be contained, in any one history of their 
times. Accordingly he has employed much industry and judg- 
ment in deducing, from the information supplied by a number 
of historical and biographical works, very clear narrations of 
the lives of Sir Thomas More, and Lords Burleigh, Strafford, 
and Clarendon. The narration is very successful in the point 
of keeping the individual always fully in view, while it is often 
necessarily extended, by the public nature of his actions, to 
the whole breadth of the national history of his times. The 
writer in general confines himself very strictly to his narra- 
tion, and is very sparing of reflections ; a forbearance prac- 
tised, no doubt, from the conviction, that a narrative written 
with fidelity, force, and discrimination, might in general be 
very safely left, from the obvious simplicity of its moral, to the 



SIR THOMAS MORE. X81 

reader's own understanding. It is also a commendable 
modest}- to keep at a great distance from the fault of those his- 
torians, who might seem to be persuaded, that the transactions 
thej record took place positively for no other purpose on earth 
but to draw forth certain wise notions from their minds. Yet 
many readers, and we do not disclaim to be of the number, are 
indolent enough to wish the historian would just give the 
direction to their thoughts ; and if he can manage to time his 
reflectiojis well, and to avoid being very trite or prolix, we are 
very willing to divide with him the merit of being very phi- 
losophical on every circumstance of the narration. We are 
not, perhaps, of opinion, that Mr. Macdiarmid's reflections 
would have been more than usually profound ; but they would 
have still further manifested that sound, liberal sense which is 
already so apparent. The style has quite the measured and 
equable form of set historical composition ; it is however per- 
spicuous, unaffected, and in a very respectable degree vigor- 
ous. The book offers a more speedy and elegant introduc- 
tion, than was before attainable, to an acquaintance with four 
of the most distinguished characters in our political history. 

With regard to the first of them, Sir Thomas More, we will 
acknowledge it must be nearly impossible for the historian of 
his life to avoid becoming very decidedly, and even enthu- 
siastically, attached to him. No great harm would result 
from a relaxation, in this instance, of that law" of severity 
under which we have represented that the lives of statesmen 
ought to be written ; for no second instance of the same kind 
will be found in the subsequent political annals of England. 
Indeed, he is a person so unique in the records of statesmen, 
that we can see no chance that any utility in the way of ex- 
ample, would arise from a display of his life and character. 
Some email degree of similarity is prerequisite as the basis 
of any reasonable hope of seeing an example imitated ; and 
therefore it would seem very much in vain, as to this purpose, 
to display a statesman and courtier who was perfectly free 
from all ambition, from the beginning of his career to the 
end ; who was brought into office and power by little less 
than compulsion ; who met general flattery and admiration 
with a calm indifference, and an invariable perception of their 
vanity ; who amidst the caresses of a monarch, longed to be 
with his children ; who was the most brilliant and vivacious 
man in every society he entered into, and yet was more fond 
9 



182 BRITISH STATE SME?*^. 

of retirement even than other statesmen were anxious for 
public glare ; who displayed a real and cordial hilarity on 
descending from official eminence to privacy and comparative 
poverty ; who made all other concerns secondary to devotion ; 
and who, with the softest temper and mildest manners, had an 
inflexibility of principle, which never at any moment knew 
how to hesitate between a sacrifice of conscience and of life. 
The mind rests on this character with a fascination which 
most rarely seizes it in passing over the whole surface of his- 
tory. In this progress we often meet with individuals that 
we greatly admire ; but the bare sentiment of admiration 
may fail to make us delighted with the ideal society of the 
object, or interested in its fate. In the company of Sir T. 
More, the admiration scarcely ever stands separate from the 
more kindly feelings ; it seems but to give the last emphasis 
to the inexpressible complacency with which we listen to him, 
converse with him, observe his movements, and follow him 
wherever he goes. If personally acquainted with such a man, 
wc should, in absence from him, be incessantly haunted with 
a necessity and a passion to get near him again ; and should 
not only feel the most animated pleasure, but also, in spite of 
the contrast between our intellectual powers and his, should 
feel as if we had five times more sense than usual, when 
stimulated and supported by the vigour of a genius which 
seemed entirely to forget any comparison between itself 
and those around, which kindly lent itself to assist every 
one to think, and gladly aided any one to shine, while 
it had never once any other ambition than to diffiise 
happiness or impart instruction. The absence of every 
kind of selfishness, the matchless gayety and good humour 
which accompanied his great talents, and his wonderfiil 
facility of using them, divested of the least timidity every one 
that approached him, except pretenders and villains. His 
manner of displaying his talents delighted his friends, into 
such a total forgetfulness of fear, that only his exalted virtue 
could preserve to him that veneration, which again his face- 
tiousness prevented from oppressing those who felt it. Per- 
haps there never was a person that possessed many various 
qualities in such perfect combination, as, in an equal degree 
with More, to make the effect of them all be felt in the opera- 
tion of any one of them. His playful wit never put his se- 
vere virtue and his wisdom out of recollection : and at the 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 183 

same time it was acknowledged, that so imperial a virtue had 
never before been seen so much at its ease in the company of 
pleasantry and humorous fancy. The habitual influence, 
therefore, of his character, was a happy and most singular 
complexity of operation ; as he could exert, and did almost 
involuntarily exert, not in succession and alternation, but at one 
and the same time, the wit, the philosopher, and the Christian. 

Distinguished statesmen generally become what may be 
called technical characters ; the whole human being becomes 
shaped into an official thing, and nature's own man, with free 
faculties, and warm sentiments, and unconstrained manners, 
has disappeared. An established process regulates the crea- 
ture into a mechanical agency ; the order of its manners is 
squared to the proper model, formed between the smooth com- 
plaisance of the courtier, and the assuming self-importance 
of the minister ; the whole train of thiniiing turns on mea- 
sures of state, on councils, acts, debates, and intrigues ; and 
the character of the court, the cabinet, and senate, sticks to 
the being most inseparably, even in the domestic circle, in 
visits to friends, and in country rambles. In More, on the 
contrary, the general natural man was always predominant 
above any artilicial character of office. The variety of his 
interest, the animation of his sentiments, and the strength of 
his powers, would not suffer affairs of state to repress the 
living impulses of his mind, or reduce to a formality of action 
that elasticity which played in all directions with infinite free- 
dom. Even in the transactions of office, it appears that his 
wit sometimes threw its sparkles through the gravity of the 
judge. In reading the lives of most other statesmen, we 
seem to be making a very unmeaning and unentertaining 
visit, to see them among their secretaries, or going to their 
councils, or^at their levees, or seated in their robes ; in read- 
ing of More, it seems to be the statesman that makes a visit 
to us, in the dress of an ordinary person, with manners formed 
by no rule but kindness and good taste, talking on all subjects, 
casually suggested, with an easy vigour of sense, and no fur- 
ther reminding us of his station and its habits, than by the 
surprise now and then recurring on our own minds to recol- 
lect that so Avonderfully free and pleasant a man is really a 
great officer of state. 

More's character derives some adventitious lustre, from 
comparison with the persons most conspicuous in the public 



184 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

affairs of England at that time. His being contemporary and 
intimately connected with Henry the Eighth, might seem as 
if intended to show in one view the two extremes of human 
nature. His modesty and disinterestedness contrast admirably 
with the proud insatiable ambition of Wolsey ; his indepen- 
dence and magnanimity with the courtly servility which it is im- 
possible not to impute to the otherwise excellent Cranmer. 

Amidst the early display and fame of talents and learning, 
his favourite wish was to become a monk, but was overruled 
by his father, who was earnest for his adopting the profession 
of the law. This at length he did, and with the greatest suc- 
cess, notwithstanding he continued to direct a large proportion 
of his studies to classical literature and to theology. At the 
age of twenty-three he entered the House of Commons, in 
the latter part of the reign of Henry the Seventh, in which 
situation his first exertion was little less than the hazard of 
his life, by an eloquent resistance to an iniquitous demand of 
money, made by this tyrant, and which the fears of the house 
w^ould have silently yielded but for the courageous virtue of 
More, which roused them to refuse the grant. He was, how- 
ever, compelled, in consequence, to exchange the bar for com- 
plete retirement ; but this only served to complete his know- 
ledge, and mature his virtues, while the tenderest domestic re- 
lations occupied his affections, and all the time that could be 
spared from his studies. He returned to his practice at the 
accession of Henry the Eighth, whose favourite, after a little 
while, he very reluctantly became, and so continued for many 
years, notwithstanding that lofty integrity which never once 
made the smallest sacrifice of principle to the will of the 
monarch. After holding several important situations, he was 
constrained to accept that of high-chancellor, in which he 
administered justice with a promptitude and a disinterested- 
ness beyond all former example, till the period of Henry's 
quarrel with the pope, respecting his divorce of the queen, and 
his marriage with Anne Boleyn. More foresaw that in his 
office of chancellor he should be compelled to an explicit op- 
position to the king, very dangerous to himself; and by ear- 
nest request obtained the acceptance of his resignation. In 
prosecuting his determination relative to the marriage, throw- 
ing off in consequence the authority of Rome altogether, and 
ultimately assuming himself the supremacy of the English 
church, the tyrant required the approbation, by oath, of the 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 185 

chief persons in the state. Especially the approbation of 
More, though now but a private person, was of far greater 
importance to him than that of any other individual. He was 
aware that More was conscientiously unable to give this ap- 
probation, and knew well that nothing on earth could induce 
him to violate his conscience ; yet, after repeated attempts at 
persuasion, he angrily insisted on his taking the several oaths, 
summoned him before a council, and gave him time to deli- 
berate in prison. After enduring with unalterable patience 
and cheerfulness the severities of a year's imprisonment in 
the tower, he was brought to trial, condemned with the un- 
hesitating haste which always distinguishes the creatures em- 
ployed by a tyrant to effect his revenge by some mockery of 
law, and with the same haste consigned to execution. Im- 
agination cannot represent a scene more affecting than the 
interview of More with his favourite daughter, nor a character 
of more elevation, or even more novelty, than that most sin- 
gular vivacity with which, in the hour of death, he crowned 
the calm fortitude which he had maintained through the whole 
of the last melancholy year of his life. Thus one of the 
noblest beings in the whole world was made a victim to the 
malice of a remorseless crowned savage, whom it is the in- 
famy of the age and nation to have sufiered to reign or to 
live.* 

* In a subsequent paper on Cayley^s Memoirs of Sir Thomas More, 
Mr. Foster recurs to this subject, and dwells upon it with a beauty and 
force which strikingly exhibit the nice discrimination and sound moral 
sense by which his intellect was distinsfuished. The passage should be 
read in connexion with his remarks on the hilarity of Hume. 

" Some grave and pious persons have been inclined to censure this 
gayety as incongruous with the feelings appropriate to the solemn situa. 
lion. We would observe, that though we were to admit, as a general 
rule, that expressions of wit and pleasantry are unbecoming the last hour, 
yet Sir Thomas More may be justly considered as the exception. The 
constitution of his mind was so singular and so happy, that throughout 
his life his humour and wit were evidently, as a matter of fact, com- 
patible, in almost all cases, with a general direction of his mind to serious 
and momentous subjects. His gayety did not imply a dereliction, even 
for the moment, of the habitude of mind proper to a wise and consci- 
entious man. It was an unquestionable matter of fact, that he could 
emit pleasantries and be seriously weighing in his mind an important 
point of equity or law, and could pass directly from the play of wit to 
the acts and the genuine spirit of devotion. And if he could at all other 
times maintain a vigorous exercise of serious thought and devout sentiment, 
unhurt by the gleaming of these lambent fires, there was no good reason 



186 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

Sir Thomas More's constant adherence to the church of 
Rome was evinced by his writing against the reformers in a 
strain of violence most uncongenial with his general charac- 
ter, by his superstitious discipline of a hair shirt and a knot- 
ted whip, by certain severities exercised on persons declaring 
against popery, by his expressing in the inscription which he 
wrote for his tomb his hostility to heretics, and by his de- 
liberate preference of death to yielding any sanction to a mea- 
sure by which the English monarch arrogated the ecclesiasti- 
cal supremacy which had previously been acknowledged in the 
popes. In the earlier part of his life, however, he manifested 
a freedom of opinion which by no means threatened to grow 
into that bigotry, which in the latter part formed the only, but 
certainly very serious foil, to so much excellence. In his 
Utopia he made no scruple to censure the corruptions and 
ridicule the follies prevalent in the Roman church, and there 
can be no doubt that to a certain limited extent he would have 
zealously concurred in a plan of reform. Till the tumults 
attending the reformation excited him to wish that Christen- 
why they might not gleam on the scaffold also. He had thousands of 
times before approached the Almighty, without finding, as he retired, that 
one of the faculties of his mind, one of the attributes of extraordinary and 
universal talent imparted to him by that Being, was become extmct in 
consequence of pious emotions : and his last addresses to that Being could 
not be of a specifically different nature from the former ; they could only 
be one degree mure solemn. He had before almost habitually thought of 
death, and most impressively realized it ; and still he had wit, and its 
soft lustre was to his friends but the more delightful for gilding so grave 
a contemplation : well, he could only realize the awful event one degree 
more impressively, when he saw the apparatus, and was warned that this 
was the hour. As protestants, we undoubtedly feel some defect of com- 
placency, in viewing such an admirable display of heroic self-possession 
mingled with so much error ; but we are convinced that he was devoutly 
obedient to what he believed the will of God, that the contemplation of 
the death of Christ was the cause of his intrepidity, and that the errors of 
his faith were not incompatible with his interest in that sacrifice. 

" There is so little danger of any excessive indulgence of sallies of wit 
in the hour of death, that there is no need to discuss the question, how 
far as a rule applicable to good men in general, such vivacity, as that of 
More, would in that season comport with the Christian character ; but 
we are of opinion that it would fully comport, in any case substantially 
resembling his ; in any case where the innocent and refined play of wit 
had been through life one of the most natural and unaffected operations 
of the mind, where it had never been felt to prevent or injure serious 
thinking and pious feeling, and where it mingled with the clear indica- 
tions of a real Christian magnanimity in death." 



SIR TH03IAS MORE. 167 

dom might be tranquillized by a paramount authority in reli- 
gion, his veneration for the pope had by no means gone the 
length of ascribing an absolute unlimited authority in reli- 
gious matters. At all times he held the decrees of general 
councils in higher respect than those of the papal court : and 
when Henry the Eighth was about to publish the famous book 
which procured him and all his successors the title of De- 
fender of the Faith, More vainly remonstrated with him against 
the extravagant terms in which that book set forth the pope's 
authority. 

He probably was not himself aware how firmly the popish 
superstitions had taken hold of his mind, till they were at- 
tacked by Luther ; and then he found them become so sacred 
in his opinion, that he deliberately avowed, and with unques- 
tionable sincerity, in his Apology, that he deemed heretics 
worse than robbers and murderers. And since his philosophy 
had fallen far short of admitting the principle that human au- 
thority has no right to punish modes of faith, he considered 
heretics as amenable to the tribunals of the state, and the 
magistrate bound to prosecute the enemies of God. The pro- 
gress of his mind to bigotry and persecution is explained by 
Mr. Macdiarmid with much intelligence, and with the utmost 
candour toward the admirable person whom he is painfully 
forced to accuse. 

It is impossible now to ascertain how far More was prac- 
tically a persecutor. If it were possible, we should go into 
the inquiry with a strong apprehension of finding, that he did 
in some measure contribute to the rigorous execution of the 
laws enacted, or brought into more decisive operation, against 
the protestants, during part of the detestable reign in which it 
was his fate to live. It is unquestionable however that some 
of the protestant writers have greatly exceeded the truth, in 
charging him with numerous acts of direct personal cruelty 
in the exercise of his power. They have used expressions 
from which it might almost be inferred, that one of his ordi- 
nary methods against protestants was the infliction of corporal 
suffering. But we have his own express affirmation, which 
we consider as of higher authority than all other testimony, 
that he had recourse to personal violence on account of the 
declared renunciation of popery only in two instances, that of 
a boy of his household, and that of a man who was guilty of 
indecent outrages on persons, particularly on women, attend- 



188 BRITISH STATUSMETT, 

ing the mass. These two he caused to be " stripped," he 
says, but not so much, he affirms, as to cause them any lasting 
pain or injury. Without however proceeding the odious 
length that has been most unjustly imputed to him, he might, in 
his high official capacity of cliancellor and president of the star- 
chamber, exercise much legal intolerance ; and from such a 
view we can only join with all good and wise men in lamenting 
the deplorable darkness and perversity of human reason, 
which both in that and later times so obstinately refiised to 
perceive or acknowledge, that religious opinions are entirely 
beyond the jurisdiction of human authority. What is most 
humiliating of all,- — many of the reformers themselves, though 
asserting liberty of opinion in their dissent from the church 
of Rome, could not comprehend that other men had the very 
same right to dissent from them. The larger portion of the 
history of the reformed churches has been the history of 
popish intolerance, variously modified indeed, in its action, by 
national and local character, and by the particular temper of 
leading individuals, but well furnished with its conclaves, its 
holy offices, its political intrigues, its bulls, its dungeons, and 
even its executioners, and operating rather on a reduced scale 
of power, than with any mitigation of malignity. All this, 
say the protestants, is very arrogant and impious in the papal 
church ; but the papal church is erroneous, and the papal 
church is not ours : — of what inestimable utility, in the true 
church, would be a modified exercise of that high authority, 
which is indeed so WTong and pernicious in the corrupt one ; 
it were very unfortunate to lose entirely so grand an advantage 
gained over the human mind by ecclesiastical authority ; cer- 
tainly it has been very improperly acquired and used by the 
church that gained it, but heing gained, might it not become a 
holy thing in the hands of holy men ? The conqueror was no 
doubt guilty of ambition and injustice, but his successors, who 
are of course wise and beneficent, may do much more good 
by retaining the subjugated provinces and the spoils, than by 
restoring liberty and property. Can the power be too great, 
when the only object to which it is possible for it ever to be 
applied in our hands is the support of the genuine cause of 
God ? When strong measures have been employed to pro- 
mote and establish error, are Ave not in duty called upon to 
use means equally strong to maintain the truth ? Sentiments 
of this kind are unhappily felt and expressed by bigots, not 



LORD BTJRLEIGH. 189 

only in all establishments, but in all sects, however mani- 
festly incompatible with their primary and fundamental prin. 
ciples. 

As long as the popish establishment stands, it will have the 
effect, not only of setting an example, venerable by age, of 
ecclesiastical dominion, but of continually suggesting how far 
it might be carried ; and it will tend to prevent any set of 
men from ever suspecting themselves of intolerance, so long 
as they stop short of the downright tyranny which that church 
has always practised, and prevent them from cordially allow- 
ing an absolute freedom of thought and profession, satisfied 
with just so much authority over men's religious opinions as 
argument, eloquence, and virtue can maintain. On account 
of this influence, as well as of the immediate noxiousness of 
the papal dominion wherever it exists, we have fervently 
to wish for the downfall of all its establishments, and humbly 
to pray, that the movements of the present awful crisis may 
happily be made so far beneficial as to result in their final 
demolition. We come back to the book before us by observ- 
ing, that the detestable quality of religious, and especially 
popish bigotry, is hardly more conspicuous in the exhibitions 
of Smithfield and St. Bartholomew, than in the fact of its 
having sometimes filled with virulence such an otherwise 
almost angelic being as Sir Thomas More. 

We must be more brief in our notice of the remaining lives. 
That of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, presents to our view beyond all 
doubt the most useful minister that ever managed the affairs 
of our country. He held the important station during very 
nearly the whole reign of Elizabeth ; and we shall not allow 
it to constitute any impeachment of either our loyalty or gal- 
lantry, that we have wished, while reading the account of his 
life, that he had been the monarch instead of our famous 
queen. It is impossible to say what share of the better part 
of her fame was owing to him, but we are inclined to think, 
that if we could make out an estimate of that reign, Avanting 
all the good which resulted from just so much wisdom and 
moderation as Cecil possessed beyond any other statesman 
that could have been employed, and including all the evil 
w^hich no other minister would have prevented, we should rifle 
that splendid period of more than half its honours. A very 
considerable proportion of his political labour was a contest 
with his sovereign, a contest with caprice, with superstition, 
9* 



190 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

with bigotry, and with the prodigality of favouritism. This 
would no doubt reflect great honour on the sovereign who 
could, notwithstanding, retain in her favour and service so 
upright a minister, if the fact had not been, that his services 
were just as indispensable to her government as those of a 
cook or postillion were to her personal accommodation. She 
had the sense to be convinced, and the prudence to act on 
her conviction, that no other man in her dominions could so 
happily direct her affairs through the extreme dangers of that 
memorable period. Though, therefore, she would sometimes 
treat him with the meanest injustice, contriving to throw on 
him the odium of any dishonourable or unpopular action of 
her own, and would occasionally make him the object, like 
the rest of her ministers, of her abusive petulance, addressing 
him with the titles of " old fool," " miscreant," and " coward," 
yet she made him always her most confidential counsellor, 
zealously defended him against his enemies, refused his ur- 
gent solicitation, when advanced far in life, to be allowed to 
retire from his office, and anxiously visited his sick room in 
the concluding period of his life, and not remote from the 
close of her own. 

Excepting one or two sublime examples in the Jewish his- 
tory. Sir Thomas More was probably the only great states- 
man that ever rose to eminence and power without ambition. 
Though Cecil's virtue could descend to no base expedients 
for advancement, he was from his early youth of a very aspir- 
ing disposition ; and certainly, if the most extraordinary in- 
dustry and attainments could merit distinction and honourable 
employment, no young man ever had superior claims. He 
very soon drew the attention of the court, obtained the utmost 
that his ambition could desire, and held a ministerial office 
probably a greater number of years than any other man in 
our history. With the exception of a very few objectionable 
or doubtful circumstances, it seems impossible to use language 
too strong in praise of this admirable minister. No states- 
man since his time has given the nation, after long experience 
of his conduct, such a profound complacent feeling of being 
safe. The idea which gradually came to be entertained of 
him was almost that of a being not needing sleep or recrea- 
tion, always active by an invincible necessity, not subject to 
any caprices of temper nor obscurations of understanding, 
created and endowed to live for the state and for no other pur- 



LORD BURLEIGH. 191 

pose, and so far above all meanness of self-intersst as to 
make it not at all worth while to examine his conduct ; and 
after being minister several times ten years, he seemed, in 
the apprehension of the people, to have outlived any danger 
of being removed from his office by death. If any unexpected 
public event happened, in England or the surrounding coun- 
tries, it was felt to be certain that the faithful old sentinel 
would be the first to see it, and would descry and avert any 
danger it might involve. If parties threatened to run high, 
it was recollected that Cecil's discernment and impartiality 
would calmly judge and balance their respective principles 
and merits, and that his incomparable powers of conciliation 
had already quieted or moderated many a political war. If a 
new man was raised to some important station, it was well- 
known that Cecil, in his appointments and recommendations, 
trampled on all pretensions but those of personal qualification. 
If the queen's favourites were given to wild courses, and 
seemed to endanger the sobriety of her government, it was 
not doubted that Cecil would keep a vigilant eye on their pro- 
ceedings, and would dare, if it should become necessary, even 
to admonish her Majesty on the subject. If a tax was im- 
posed, it was relied on that the careful and frugal minister 
would not have sanctioned it without an indispensable ne- 
cessity. If a negotiation was carried on with foreign states, 
it was quite a certain thing that Cecil would neither provoke 
them nor cringe to them, would sacrifice no national advan- 
tage either through pride or meanness. And if a military 
expedition was to be equipped, it was not a matter to bs 
doubted that some just and important object was to be gained, 
at the smallest possible hazard and expense. Such a man 
was of necessity violently hated by every party and every in- 
dividual, in constant succession, that had any mean projects 
of self-interest to prosecute at the expense of the public wel- 
fare ; but the bulk of the nation must have wished centuries 
of life, if it had been possible, to the incomparable minister. 
The character of his understanding was that of vast compre- 
hension, which could view the most complicated system of 
concerns in all its parts, and in due proportion, at once ; and 
therefore saw how to promote the advantage of the whole by 
the expedients devised for any particular part. The charac- 
ter of his political temper, if we may so express it, was a 
vigorous moderation, prompt and resolute in its measures, 



192 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

and yet seeking to accomplish the end hj the most temperate 
means and in the quietest manner. Moderation was conspi- 
cuous in the general scope and direction of his designs, as 
well as in the manner of eifecting each particular object. He 
was the invariable opponent of war, which he, unaccounta- 
bly, judged an expedient very rarely necessary even in the 
most turbulent times, and of which he most perfectly beheld 
the vile and hideous features through the romantic dazzling 
kind of heroism so much in vogue in those enterprising times. 
But the greatest and most continued efforts of his moderate 
policy were made in the endeavour to preserve to the peo- 
ple some slight shadow of religious liberty, in opposition 
to the half-popish queen, and a most bigoted and perse- 
cuting hierarchy, that incessantly counteracted his liberal 
schemes. 

The boasted reign of Elizabeth was a period of great barba- 
rism, as far as related to the royal and episcopal notions of the 
rio'hts of conscience, and of great cruelty in the practical ad- 
ministration of the religious department. Cecil remonstrated 
in a spirited manner against the proceedings of the prelates, 
which he charged with being nearly the same as those of the 
Inquisition ; but when he attempted to interpose his official 
authority in defence of the victims of their intolerance, he 
found they had so entirely the approbation of the queen, that 
they would set his remonstrances and interposition at defiance. 
She was a bigoted devotee to various popish superstitions, 
was passionately fond of gaudy and childish ceremonials in 
the ecclesiastical institutions, was the bitter enemy of every 
thing like real liberty of religious opinion, and, in short, was 
altogether unworthy of being, where circumstances had placed 
her, at the head of the protestant cause. The accident of her 
being placed in this distinguished situation, and being conse- 
quently hated and conspired against by all the catholic go- 
vernments, was the grand security for the animated loyalty of 
her protestant subjects ; and even the puritans, towards whom 
the measures of her reign symbolized a good deal with the 
plagues of Egypt, were so desperate of any other defence 
against the horrors of a real popish dominion and persecution, 
that they entered into associations for the protection of her 
person and government. Their loyalty, therefore, was ob- 
viously in a great degree self-interested ; but the following 
passage, among very many others of a similar kind that might 



LORD BURLEIGH. 193 

be extracted, will tend to show that it was also in no small 
degree generous and gratuitous. Away then with the charge 
of faction and turbulence which has been made against 
this venerable class of sufferers, unless the charge of fac- 
tion is also to be applied to the principle of returning good 
for evil. 

" Elizabeth hoklins: very different sentiments from these, not only pre- 
scribed pecuHar forms for the worship of her people, but was deter, 
mined that they should use no other. The puritans, on the other hand, 
without caUing her right in question, objected to the forms which she had 
appointed, because they had been previously employed in the popish wor- 
ship, as mystical symbols, and were associated in the minds of the people 
with the grossest superstitions. They resolved therefore that no worldly 
considerations should induce them to assume what they accounted appcn. 
dages of idolatry : while the queen, on her part, prepared to employ all 
her authority in support of this exertion of her supremacy. 

" Fmding that her council, the ablest and wisest council that England 
ever saw, were decidedly averse to measures which threatened to involve 
the nation in the most dangerous dissensions, she resolved to effect her pur- 
pose by means of the bishops, particularly Archbishop Parker, who readily 
and zealously entered into her views The severities to which these now 
proceeded, were only surpassed by the frivolity of the pretences under 
which they were exercised. While the fervent attachment to the use of 
surplices, corner-caps, tippets, the cross in baptism, and the ring in mar- 
riage, were considered as the distinguishing characteristics of a Christian, 
any dislike to these forms, which were allowed to be in themselves indif- 
ferent, was accounted a sufficient crime to subject the most learned and 
pious clergyman to imprisonment and exile ; or, as a mitigated punish- 
ment, to be turned out of his living, and with his family consigned to indi. 
gence. The most pernicious effects necessarily flowed from these excesses. 
While the church was weakened by the loss of a large portion of her most 
able divines, and degraded by the introduction of a great number of men 
who could barely read the prayer-book, and write their own names, without 
even pretending to preach, the people began every where to collect round 
their expelled teachers, and to form conventicles apart from the establish- 
ment. Yet these bad consequences only set the queen and her bishops 
upon obtaining new statutes to reach the refractory ; and at length, even 
the laity were brought within their grasp, by an act which provided that non- 
attendance at public worship, in the parish churches, should be punished 
with imprisonment, banishment, and if the exile returned, with death. An 
arbitrary commission was appointed with full powers to bring all religious 
offenders to punishment ; and as any resistance to the injunctions of the 
queen, as supremo head of the church, was at length construed into sedi- 
tion and treason, many subjects, of unquestioned loyalty, were imprisoned, 
banished, and even executed." — P. 156. 

There could be no hazard in affirming, that a man combin- 
ing greater industry with greater powers of execution, never 



194 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

lived since the beginning of time. And when it is considered 
through what a very long period these exertions were main- 
tained, and that for the most part they were most judiciously 
directed to the public good, we may be allowed to dwell with 
high complacency on this great character, notwithstanding the 
censure which we think justly due to the magnificence of his 
private establishment, and the reprobation deserved by one or 
two iniquitous modes of taxation which he suggested to Eliza- 
beth. And though it was certainly very unnecessary, except 
to his ambition, for him to occupy so vastly wide a sphere of 
official employment, and it might have been more truly pat- 
riotic to have endeavoured to introduce other men of merit into 
some of the departments, both in order to give them a share of 
the deserved distinction, and to qualify them to serve the na- 
tion after death should have closed his own labours, yet we 
would earnestly press this wonderful example of industry, as 
a pattern and a monition, on the consciences of many worthy 
people, who may applaud themselves for having passed a busy 
week, in virtue of about so much real application as would 
have been compressed into less than half a day of our indefati- 
gable statesman. 

Notwithstanding the rigorous occupation of his time and 
faculties by the business of the government, we are informed 
that he could lay aside all the formality of the statesman, in 
the company of his select friends, and in amusing himself with 
his children and grandchildren. — We are gratified by all the 
indications that religion had a habitual influence on his mind ; 
and his maxim, given in the first sentence of the following 
quotation, will furnish the most dignified explanation of the 
principle which secured the general rectitude of his own use- 
ful and admirable life. 

" It was usual with him to say that he would never trust any man but 
of sound rcliorion, for he that was false to God would never be true to man. 
From his speeches and discourses we are led to conclude, that his religious 
sentimsnts had a powerful effect in confirmuig his fortitude, amidst the 
perilous circumstances with which he was often surrounded. At the aw- 
ful period when Philip was preparmg his Armada, and when the utter de- 
struction of the English government was confidently expected abroad, and 
greatly dreaded at home, Burleigh appeared uniformly collected and reso- 
lute ; and when the mighty preparations of the Spaniards were spoken of 
in his presence with apprehension, he only replied with firmness, ' They 
shall do no more than God will suffer them.' The strictness of his morals 
correspouded with his religious professions ; nor could his enemies, who 



EAEL OF STRAFFOED. 195 

severely scrutinized his most indifferent actions, impute to hlra even the 
vices peculiarly incident to his rank." — P. 245. 

Devout references to the Deity might not be of ordina- 
ry occurrence among ministers of state of that day ; the 
more extensive prevalence of sincere piety among the 
great, in the present times, must be the cause that we now 
so very frequently hear our statesmen, in adverting to dan- 
gers of similar kind, utter with true devotional solemnity such 
reflections as that expressed by Cecil on occasion of the Ar- 
mada. 

The next life is that of Wentworth, Earl of Straflbrd, and 
it is the longest and most important of the series. It is evi- 
dently the result of severe thought, and very diligent research ; 
and to us it appears to be written with the utmost impartiality 
that is possible to any man who really holds certain decided 
principles relative to the right and wrong of governments. 
We can perceive in the writer no trace of the demagogue or 
partisan ; the amplest justice is done to the talents of the dis- 
tinguished person, and in several points his conduct is liberal- 
ly applauded for integrity ; while the very fair advantage is 
given him throughout of being his own evidence and advocate, 
as his letters and dispatches are taken as the principal author- 
ity. This life is a most interesting piece of composition, in 
which the account of an extraordinary individual is very dex- 
terously managed to combine and animate various general 
sketches of the affairs of the most memorable period of our his- 
tory. The narration of Strafford's active political career, 
which commenced early in his life, is preceded by a rapid but 
very able and luminous statement of the contest which had 
been zealously maintained, through several ages, between the 
respective claims of the monarch and the people ; which great 
contest, as he clearly shows, was precipitated very fast to- 
ward a decision, at the period when Strafford entered on the 
public stage. The preceding sovereigns, and by no means less 
than the rest, James's immediate predecessor, had held a very 
magnificent language on the subject of the royal power and 
prerogatives ; but Elizabeth took care to avoid the necessity 
of bringing the obnoxious question to issue in the most dan- 
gerous form of large demands of money. Her extreme econo- 
my in the public expenditure, her admired talents, the une- 
qualled policy of her great minister, her being the chief of 



196 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

the protestant cause, and the influence which her sex main- 
tained on the chivalrous part of the nation, had all concurred 
to secure for her a tolerance of the arrogant pretensions which 
she so prudently forbore to follow up into a complete 
practical assertion. It was not within the capacity of James 
to understand, that the nation must be greatly transformed if it 
could endure the same language, even though combined with 
the same practical forbearance, from a stranger, of the slen- 
derest endowments, of prodigal and low habits, suspected of 
popery, and governed by such a favourite as the infamous 
Buckingham. But he was resolved that they should not only 
hear the loftiest strains of the jus divimnn, but should be made 
to acquiesce in all the modes of verifying it on their purses, 
their creeds, and their persons. He was indeed compelled to 
observe the popular formality of calling parliaments ; but he 
revenged himself by stout though laconic lectures to them on 
passive obedience, by insults, by declarations of their futility, 
by peremptory demands of money, and by petulant orders of 
dissolution. This was the state of things at the time that 
Strafford, a young gentleman of large fortune, of very high 
spirit, of powerful talents, and by no means devoid of all good 
qualities, entered into parliament ; and it required but a short 
time to make him very prominent among the leaders of the 
popular cause, to the support of which none of his contempo- 
raries brought more courage, or more eloquence. He entered 
so fully into the arguments of this cause, as to deprive himself, 
if he should desert it, of all apology on the ground of juvenile 
rashness and inconsideration. It was of course not long before 
so formidable an opponent received overtures from Bucking- 
ham, in behalf of himself and the court which he ruled. What 
surprise would be felt by any reader who should not have lived 
long enough to know how these matters regularly go, to find 
that these overtures were received and replied to with the 
greatest possible politeness by Strafford, though he had a thou- 
sand times, within a few preceding months, pronounced the 
man by whom they were made to be the greatest miscreant in 
Europe, and to be intent on such designs as every man of vir- 
tue ought to oppose, even to the hazard of his life ! He in- 
stantly placed himself in the attitude of patient waiting, and in 
part payment of the price of the good things he was going to 
receive, began, in parliament, to endeavour to moclei-ate the 
tone of the popular party ; though most zealous for their great 



EARL OP STRAFFORD. 197 

cause, he was anxious they should not prosecute it in the spi- 
rit and language olfaction. Our benevolent sympathy was ex- 
tremely hurt to find, that this virtuous patriot was deceived and 
insulted by Buckingham, who, on second thoughts, had deter- 
mined to do without him. It then became proper to discov- 
er again, that no energy of opposition in parliament could 
be too vehement against the designs of the favourite and the 
king. 

That king was Charles the First, who having made a long 
and very strenuous effort to subdue the people and the parlia- 
ment to his arbitrary government by authority and intimidation, 
was induced again to try the expedient of converting some of 
the boldest of the refractory into friends by means of honours 
and emoluments. He was instantly successful with Strafford, 
who accepted a peerage, and the presidency of the Council of 
York ; and became and continued to the end of his life, the 
most faithful and devoted servant of the king, and of his de- 
spotic system of government. He might seem to have felt an 
almost enthusiastic passion for despotism in the abstract, inde- 
pendently of any partiality for the particular person who was 
to exercise it. After a few years of his administration as 
viceroy of Ireland, he exulted to declare, that in that country 
the king was as absolute as any monarch in the whole world. 
And when, after the very long series of struggles between 
Charles and the people, the question was coming rapidly to the 
last fatal arbitrement, he urged the king to the prompt adoption 
of the most vigorous and decisive measures ; and he was mor- 
tified almost to distraction when he saw him, notwithstanding 
this energetic advice, falling into a wavering and timid policy. 
His own character and measures, indeed, had always been 
distinguished by an extraordinary and almost preternatural vig- 
our. His energy and fortitude did not desert him, even when 
at length he found himself falling under the power and ven- 
geance of that irresistible popular spirit which embodied its de- 
termined force and hostility in the long parliament, aided, with 
respect to Strafford, by the hatred and court influence of the 
queen. He maintained the most graceful and dignified firmness 
on the scaffold, to which he was consigned in the result of the 
most memorable trial, except that of his royal master, in the 
records of our history ; a trial in which a perversion of law 
was made the expedient for accomplishing what was deemed 
a point of moral justice not formally provided for by the law. 



198 BRITISH STATESMEN. 

As in all such cases, the bad effects became conspicuous, as Mr. 
Macdiarmid observes, in the admiration which the heroic suf- 
ferer excited in his death ; whereas, if he had only been doom- 
ed, as he did well deserve, and would have been felt to deserve, 
to perpetual imprisonment or exile, his name and character 
would have sunk down quietly to their proper level, and he 
would simply have been recollected as one of the many able 
unprincipled men, who have chosen to identify their fame 
with that of the despots of whom they have consented to be 
the tools. 



LORD KAMES. 199 

VII. 

LORD KAMES. 



Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Hon. Henry Home^ 
of Kame ; containing Sketches of the Progress of Litera- 
ture and general Lnprovement in Scotland, during the great- 
er part of the Eighteenth Century. 

The principal facts relative to the individual who forms the 
leading subject of this work, may be given in a few words. 
Henry Home was the son of a country gentleman of small for- 
tune, and was born in the year 1696. About the age of six- 
teen, he was bound by indenture to attend the office of a writer 
to the signet in Edinburgh, with a view to prepare himself for 
the profession of a solicitor. Being sent one evening by his 
master with some papers to the President of the Court of Ses- 
sion, he was so handsomely treated by the venerable judge and 
his daughter, and so enchanted with the character of dignity 
and elegance in their manners and situation, that he was in- 
stantly fired with the ambition of attaining eminence in the 
public profession of the law, and resolved to qualify himself for 
an advocate. He commenced a most laborious course of study, 
as well in the departments of literature and science, as in the 
knowledge more peculiarly appropriate to his intended profes- 
sion, and made a rapid progress in them all. He was called to 
the bar at the age of twenty- seven, published various writings 
on legal subjects, obtained at length the first eminence as a 
pleader, and was appointed at the age of fifty-six one of the 
judges of the Court of Session, by the title of Lord Kames. 
His moral and metaphysical studies were prosecuted with as 
much ardour as those of the law ; he was personally acquaint- 
ed with most of the philosophers of the time ; and by means of 
his writings became celebrated as a philosopher himself. 
When he was near the age of seventy, his fortune received the 
addition of a very large estate, left to his wife, to whom he had 



200 LOED KAMES. 

been married at the age of forty-five : this estate he was ahiiost 
enthusiastically fond of cultivating and adorning. About the 
same period that he obtained this wealth, his legal rank was 
raised to that of a Lord of Justiciary, a judge of the supreme 
criminal tribunal in Scotland, of which office he continued to 
discharge the duties till his death, in 1782, in the eighty- 
seventh year of his age. 

Lord Karnes was a very conspicuous man in his time, and 
deserved to pass down to posterity in a record of considerable 
length. He has rendered a material service to literature by 
his "' Elements of Criticism ;" and from the work before us it 
is evident, that his professional studies contributed the most im- 
portant advantages to both the theory and the administration of 
law in Scotland. The improvement in agriculture also, in that 
country, seems to have taken its rise, in a great measure, from 
his zeal and his example. He received from nature an extra- 
ordinary activity of mind, to which his multiplied occupations 
allowed no remission, even in his advanced age ; we find him 
as indefatigable in his eightieth year, as in the most vigorous 
and ambitious season of his life. The versatility of his talents 
was accompanied by a strength and acuteness, which penetrated 
to the essence of the subjects to which they were applied. 
The intentions with which he prosecuted such a wide diversity 
of studies, appear often excellent ; very few men so ingenious, 
so speculative, so systematic, and occasionally so fanciful, 
have kept practical utility so generally in view. The great 
influence which he exerted over some of the younger philoso- 
phers of the time, several of the most distinguished of whom 
were proud to acknowledge themselves his pupils, was employed 
to determine their speculations to useful purposes. His conduct 
in the office of judge appears to have impressed every impartial 
man that witnessed it, with an invariable opinion of his talents 
and integrity. As a domestic and social man, his character 
was that of frankness, good humour, and extreme vivacity. 
His prompt intelligence continually played around him, and 
threw its rays on every subject that even casualty could intro- 
duce into conversation. His defects as a speculatist were, that 
he had not, like the very first order of minds, that simplicity of 
intellect that operates rather in the form of power than of inge- 
nuity, and is too strong to be either captivated or amused by the 
specious fallacies of a fantastic theory ; and that, as far as we 
have the means of judging, he had a higher respect for 



LORD KAMES, 201 

the conjectures of mere reason, than for the authority of rcA^e- 
lation. 

The name of Lord Kames is sufficiently eminent to render 
an account of his life interesting, though it appear more than 
twenty years after his death. But we greatly admire the 
modesty wdth w^hich Lord Woodhouselee, better known to 
the literary world under the name of Mr. Fraser Tytler, has 
been waiting, during this extended interval, for some abler 
hand to execute a work, to which he, very unaccountably, pro- 
fesses himself inadequate. This long delay, however, has 
been of immense service to the magnitude of the performance, 
which has perhaps been growing many years, and has risen 
and expanded at length, into a most ample shade of cypress 
over the tomb of Lord Kames. 

In order to give the book this prodigious size, the author 
has chosen to take advantage of Lord Kames's diversified 
studies, to enlarge on the several subjects of those studies ; 
of his profession of law, to deduce the history of Scottish 
law, and of the lives of its most distinguished professors and 
practitioners, accompanied by dissertations on law in general ; 
and of his happening to be a Scotchman, to go back as far as 
the tenth century in order to prove that there were scholars 
then in Scotland, and return all the way downward, proving 
that there have been scholars there ever since. In his youth 
Lord Kames was acquainted with a particular species of 
beaux, peculiar to those times, which animals had, if our 
author is to be believed, a singular faculty of uniting the two 
functions of fluttering and thinking ; and therefore several in- 
dividuals are to be separately described, (vol. i. p. 57, &c.) 
It was extremely proper to give us a short account of the 
species, as forming a curious branch of entomology ; but it 
does not seem to have been so indispensable to describe, in- 
dividually, beau Forrester and beau Hamilton. Because one 
of Lord Kames's early friends, a Mr. Oswald, was a mem- 
ber of parliament, a sheet and a half must be occupied by 
uninteresting letters, w^iich this Mr. Oswald wrote to him 
about temporary and party politics. A larger space is filled 
with letters from Dean Tucker, which, excepting one, and 
perhaps two or three paragraphs of another, are not of the 
smallest consequence, further than their being written to Lord 
Kames ; but therefore they are inserted. Lord Kames was 
acquainted with David Hume, and, therefore, in his life, there 
must be a very long account of the publication and reception 



202 LORD KAMES. 

of " Hume's Treatise of Human Nature," with a very long 
extract from its conclusion. Lord Kames wrote a well known 
book called the " Elements of Criticism," and therefore ac- 
tually fifteen pages at once are filled with an extract from 
that book. We have taken all due pains, but ineffectually, to 
reconcile ourselves to this mode of enlarging the size of a 
book by uninteresting letters, and indolent extracts. But 
even if a large work were constructed without this lazy ex- 
pedient, and consisted almost wholly of the honest workman- 
ship of the author, we have still an invincible dislike to the 
practice of pouring forth the miscellaneous stores of a com- 
mon-place book, of relating the literary, the legal, the philo- 
sophical, and the political transactions of half a century, and 
of expending narrative and panegyric to a vast amount on a 
crowd of all sorts of people, under the form and pretence of 
recording the life of an individual. It is an obvious charge 
against this species of writing, that it can have no assignable 
limits, for as the object is undefinable, we can never be cer- 
tain that it is gained ; and therefore the writer may go on 
adding volume to volume, still pretending that all this is neces- 
sary to his plan, till his whole stock of miscellaneous ma- 
terials is exhausted ; and then he may tell us with a critical 
air of knowing what he is about, that he has executed, how- 
ever imperfectly, the plan which he had considered as best 
adapted for doing justice to the interesting subject. But if 
instead of this he were to tell us, (perhaps on having found 
another drawer-full of materials) that another volume was ne- 
cessary for giving right proportions and a right conclusion to his 
work, we could not contradict him, because we should not know 
where to seek for the rules or principles by which to decide what 
would be a proper form or termination ; unless we were to refer 
the case to be settled by our patience, or our purse, according to 
which authorities in criticism, we may possibly have passed, a 
good way back, the chapter or paragraph, which appeared very 
proper for a conclusion. Every work ought to have so far a 
specific object, that we can form some notion what materials 
are properly or improperly introduced, and within what com- 
pass the whole should be contained. Those works that dis- 
dain to recognise any standard of prescription according to 
which books are appointed to be made, may fairly be regarded 
as outlaws of literature, which every prowling reviewer has 
a right to fall upon wherever he finds them. 

Another serious objection against this practice of making a 



LORD KAMES. 203 

great book of a mass of materials so diverse that they have no 
natural connexion, and in such quantity that the slender nar- 
rative of an individual's life is insufficient to form an artificial 
connexion, is, that it is extremely injurious to the good order 
of our intellectual arrangements ; as it accustoms the reader 
to that broken, immethodical, and discursive manner of thought 
which is preventive or destructive of the power both of pro- 
longed attention and continuous reasoning. Just when a man 
has resolved, and possibly begun, to put his mind under severe 
discipline, in order to cure its rambling propensities, when he 
has perhaps vowed to do penance in mathematics for his 
mental dissipation, he is met by one meretricious pair of vol- 
umes after another, presenting all the seducing attractions of 
novelty, variety, facility of perusal, amusement somewhat 
dignified by an admixture of grave sense, and all this in an 
attire of the utmost elegance, from the type to the outside 
covering. The unfortunate sinner renounces his vows, throws 
away his mathematics, and becomes as abandoned a literary 
libertine as ever. If it be said, that a book thus composed 
merits, at the most, no more serious accusation than merely 
that of its being a miscellany, and that we have many mis- 
cellanies and collectanea which are well received by the pub- 
lic as a legitimate class of books ; we answer, yes, we have 
miscellanies and collectanea without number, and they are 
a pest of literature ; they reduce our reading to a useless 
amusement, and promote a vicious taste that nauseates the 
kind of reading, which alone can supply well-ordered know- 
ledge, and assist the attainment of a severe and compre- 
hensive judgment. These heterogeneous productions drive 
away the regular treatises, the best auxiliaries of mental dis- 
cipline, from the tables of both our male and female readers ; 
and the volumes of our Lockes, and Hartleys, and Reids, are 
reduced to become a kind of fortifying wall to the territory of 
spiders, on the remotest and dustiest shelf in all the room. 

Against an assemblage of multifarious biography of dis- 
tinguished men, under the ostensible form of a record of the 
life of an individual, we have to observe that it has the falla- 
cious effect of making that individual appear as always the 
king of the whole tribe. This would not be the eflect, if 
merely so much were mentioned, concerning other eminent 
persons, as should be indispensable to the history of the one 
immediately in question. These short references might just 
give us an impression of the high rank of those other persons, 



204 LORD KAMES. 

and induce us to seek in the proper quarter for more ample 
information concerning them : they would be brought into no 
comparison with the person whose life is exclusively to be re- 
lated. But when so much is said of them, that we seem to 
have a competent memoir of each, so that we do not want to 
inquire any further, and when yet all these memoirs together 
do not occupy so large a space as that filled by the chief per- 
sonage, this individual comes to hold in our thoughts a magni- 
tude superior to that of the rest, nearly in proportion to the 
ampler space he fills in the book. There is enough to bring them 
into comparison with him, and too little to illustrate and support 
their claims in that comparison ; and they seem but assem- 
bled as bashaws round their Grand Turk. In the work be- 
fore us, Lord Karnes appears, (for we have been at pains, 
with the help of Erasmus^ De copia verhorum et rerurn^ to find 
a nobler simile than the last) like Jupiter on the top of the 
Scottish Olympus, looking kindly, though majestically, down, 
on the inferior personages of the worshipful assembly, such 
as Hume, Reid, Adam Smith, Millar, and many others. Lord 
Woodhouselee does not expressly proclaim the superiority, 
and perhaps no more did Mercury or Ganymede s ; it is enough 
that Jupiter did, and that Lord Kames does, Sit on the most 
spacious throne. But then let us turn to the historian and 
eulogist of some other member of that great philosophic 
hierarchy, and the venerable order is strangely confounded 
and revolutionized ; Dr. Adam Smith, for instance, places 
David Hume on the proudest eminence, and Kames, and all 
the rest of them, are made to know their places. This game 
of shifting dignities, this transferring of regal honours, must 
continue, till each panegyrist shall have the discretion to con- 
fine his work so much to an individual, as to avoid the in- 
vidiousness of constantly, in effect, running a parallel between 
him and his contemporaries. 

We also object to the telling, in the life of one man, of so 
much about the life, and works, and actions of another, be- 
cause if the life of that other is likewise to be written, the 
biographer of the former actually forestalls or pilfers the ma- 
terials which are wanted by the biographer of the latter. 
And thus the same thing is told twice, or, if but once, it is told 
in the wrong place. But it is certain to be told twice, for the 
trade of mutual borrowing, and mutual stealing, never throve 
better than among the biographers of the present day. 

In reading this, and some late voluminous works, purport. 



LORD KAMES. 20B 

ing to be tlie lives of particular persons, and in observing the 
multitude of memoirs of other persons appended or inter- 
woven, we have earnestly wished, that each country, and 
especially North Britain, had been a good while since pro- 
i^ided with a standard approved dictionary of all its names of 
any consequence ; with a sufficient quantity of information 
under each, and with a concise supplement regularly added 
every few years. In that case, the writer of a particular and 
eminently distinguished life, would not have needed, and 
could have had no pretext, to swell the bulk of his work with 
an account of every person, of the smallest note, whom he 
had occasion to mention, as contemporary, or in any manner 
connected, with the principal person, or even as having pre- 
ceded him by years or centuries. We might then be re- 
ferred, in one line, to the article in the dictionary, to be con- 
sulted at leisure, and go on, without circuit or interruption, 
with the main subject. We still wish this were done, with 
the utmost haste; since we do not know how many more pon- 
derous and costly works, like the present, may else come out, 
loaded with secondary subjects, and even with the substance 
of some of the very same articles which have encumbered 
this and recent publications. For making such a dictionary, 
it will be of service to consult these works of which we have 
complained, and extract from them several articles relating to 
persons of whom, though deserving of some notice, no in- 
formation, as it should seem, may be found anywhere else. 
There is, for instance, in the book before us, a particular ac- 
count of an obscure, but apparently an able man, of the name 
of Colin Maclaurin. It was a disappointment to us not to 
see this followed by some account of Maclaurin's master, an- 
other obscure man of the name of Newton. 

Having thus honestly protested against this mode of raising 
a large and costly book by collecting a heap of heterogeneous 
materials, and having informed our readers that the life of 
Lord Kames, though very long and busy, forms but a rather 
slight and arbitrary combination of the contents of these vol- 
umes, we must now express our opinion of the merit of those 
contents separately considered ; and produce some extracts 
illustrative of their quality. And we are prompt to testify, 
that in many instances their quality is high. Lord Wood- 
houselee is an able and practised thinker, possessed of ample 
stores of learning and general knowledge, well acquainted 
10 



206 LORD KA3IES. 

with the history, the schools, and the questions of philosophy ; 
a discriminative judge of character ; and writir.g in a style, 
which we deem a linished exan^.ple of what may be called 
transparent diction. It is so singularly lucid, so free from all 
affected rhetoric and artificial turns of phrase, so perfectly 
abstracted, with the exception of a law term or two, from 
every dialect appropriated to a particular subject, that we have 
never viewed thoughts through a purer medium. It is so pure 
and perfect, that we can read on, a considerable way, without 
our attention being arrested by the medium ; it is as if there 
were nothing, if we may so express ourselves, between us and 
the thought. And we are made to think of the medium after 
some time, only by the reflection how very clearly we have 
apprehended the sense, even when relating to the uncouth 
subjects of law, or the abstruse subjects of metaphysics. 
By this pure and graceful diction, we are beguiled along with 
the author, through several prolix and unnecessary details, 
without being indignant, till we are past them, that he should 
have occupied himself and us with things too inconsiderable 
to deserve a fifth part of the space they fill. 

We have been greatly pleased and instructed by many of 
the reasonings on topics of philosophy, law, and criticism, the 
result of mature and comprehensive thought, and but very 
little tinctured by the peculiarities of any sect or school, 
though somewhat partial, of course, to the opinions of Lord 
Kames, who, in spite of the immense disparity of age, was 
the intimate friend of the author's younger years. Many of 
his observations and statements, elucidate the history and pro- 
gress of law, science, and literature in Scotland* We have 
only to regret, that he had not elaborated his thoughts on these 
various subjects into a digested series of finished essays, in- 
stead of throwing them together in a mass, to swell beyond 
all reasonable bounds the importance of an individual. A 
great part of this matter might just as well have been ap- 
pended to the life of any one of half a dozen other of the 
Scottish philosophers of the last century ; a proof of the im- 
propriety of its being all incorporated with the history of 
one. 

As to the letters to Lord Kames, which constitute a ma- 
terial portion of the work, we have already said, that many of 
them ought to have been omitted. But a considerable number 
are highly distinguished by sense or ingenuity ; we refer to 



LORD KAMES. 207 

several from Dr. Franklin, many from Mrs. Montague, one 
from Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, on com'ts of equity, one or 
two from David Hume, and a few long ones, of great value, 
fi'om Professor Walker and Dr. Reid. The very long and 
intimate friendship with this last eminent philosopher, con- 
tinued to the death of Lord Kames. Their characters are 
thus amusingly contrasted by Mr. Dugald Stewart : 

" With one very distinguished character, the late Lord Kames, he (Dr. 
Reid) hved in the most cordial and affectionate friendship, notwithstand- 
ing the avowed opposition of their sentiments on some moral questions to 
which he attached the greatest importance. Both of them, however, 
were the friends of virtue and of mankind ; and both were able to temper 
the warmth of free discussion with the forbearance and good humour 
founded on mutual esteem. No two men, certainly, ever exhibited 
a more striking contrast in their conversation, or in their constitutional 
tempers : the one slow and cautious in his decisions, even on those topics 
which he had most diligently studied ; reserved and silent in promiscuous 
society; and retaining, after all his literary eminence, the same simple . 
and unassuming manners which he brought from his country residence : 
the other lively, rapid, and communicative ; accustomed by his pro- 
fessional pursuits, to wield with address the weapons of controversy, and 
not averse to a trial of his powers on questions the most foreign to his 
ordinary habits of inquiry. But these characteristical differences, while 
to their common friends, they lent an additional charm to the distinguish- 
ing merits of each, served only to enliven their social intercourse, and to 
cement their mutual attachment." — Vol. II. p. 230. 

Their correspondence, and no doubt their conversations, 
were directed very much to the most abstruse questions of 
physical and metaphysical science. Indeed, we deem it 
honourable to Lord Kames, that most of his friendships ap- 
pear to have been as laborious as they were sincere. The 
w^hole quantity of intellectual faculty existing among his 
friends was put in permanent requisition. And when he at 
any time heard of strong minds among his contemporaries, 
beyond the circle of his acquaintance, it was not long before 
he was devising how to trepan them, as elephants are caught 
in the east, in order to make them work. He had all kinds 
of burdens ready for them, and no burden so light, that any of 
them could frisk and gambol under it, in the wantonness of 
superfluous strength. It was at their peril, that any of them 
showed signs of thinking little of the difficulty of a discussion 
in law or criticism ; they were sure to have a whole system 
of metaphysics laid on their backs at the next turn. Very 
early in life he commenced this plan, and thought himself on 
the point of catching one of the stoutest of the elephantine 



208 LORD KAMES. 

race. Dr. Clarke had some years before published his cele- 
brated Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, 
Mr. Home, at the age of twenty-seven, wrote him a long 
letter, proposing" objections, and demanding new arguments 
and solutions. Its unceremonious and almost presumptuous 
style, however, evinced a want of skill as yet in his inveigling 
art; the device was too coarsely adjusted to trepan one of the 
most discerning of the giant species ; who just stopped a few 
minutes in passing, tossed about with his trunk, as if in scorn 
of the design, some of the piles of materials with which it had 
been intended to load him, and then moved quietly off into the 
forest. — In simple language, Dr. Clarke wrote him a short, 
civil, and argumentative letter, and the correspondence went 
no further. 

Lord Kames had always a very strong partiality to meta- 
physical studies ; and he evinced even in that letter to Dr. 
Samuel Clarke, which we have already noticed with disappro- 
bation of its spirit, an acuteness adapted to excel in abstract 
speculations. In first introducing him in the character of a 
philosopher. Lord Woodhouselee takes occasion to make some 
observations on the tendency and value of metaphysical re- 
searches. 

*' Allowing them to be conversant about the noblest part of our frame, 
the nature and powers of the human soul ; and granting that they give 
the most vigorous exercise to the understanding, by training the mmd to 
an earnest and patient attention to its own operations ; still I fear it must 
be admitted, that as those abstract studies are beyond the limits of the 
faculties of the bulk of mankind, no conclusion thence derived can have 
much influence on human conduct. Even the anxiety shown by metaphy- 
sical writers to apologize for their favourite pursuits, by endeavouring, with 
great ingenuity, to deduce from them a few practical consequences with 
respect to life and manners, is strong proof of the native infertility of the 
soil, on which so much labour is bestowed to produce so small a return. 
It is not much to the praise of this science, that the most subtle and inge- 
nious spirits have, for above two tliousand years, assiduously exercised 
themselves in its various subjects of discussion, and have not yet arrived 
at a set of fundamental principles on which the thinking world is agreed. 
Neither have the uses, to which this sort of reasoning has sometimes been 
applied, tended to enhance its estimation. The attempts that have been 
made to found morality on metaphysical principles, have for certain been 
prejudicial, on the whole, to the cause of virtue. The acutest of the 
sceptical writers, availing themselves of Mr. Locke's doctrine of the origin 
of ideas, and the consequences he has thence drawn respecting morals, 
have done much more harm by weakening our belief in the reality of 
moral distinctions, than the ablest of their opponents, combating them on 
the same ground, and with the same weapons, have found it possible to 



LORD KAMES. 209 

repair. The baneful industry of the former has, it is true, made the 
labours of the latter in some degree necessary, and therefore useful ; and 
it is in this point of view tliat the writings of those metaphysicians, who 
are antagonists of the sceptical philosophy, are entitled to attention and to 
praise." — Vol. I. p. 21. 

Such observations are of much weight as coming from a 
person so well versed in metaphysics. But it will be impos- 
sible for the reader of these volumes to believe the author can 
mean to be very rigid in proscribing metaphysical study, to 
which we can perceive that his clear understanding is in no 
small degree indebted. Nor will any enlightened man, we 
think, condemn, without great qualification, what is evidently 
the sublimest class of speculations, what demands the strong- 
est mental powers, and their severest exertion, and makes a 
bold effort to reach, in some small degree, that kind of know- 
ledge, or, if we may so speak, that mode of knowing, which 
perhaps forms the chief or peculiar intellectual distinction be- 
tween us and superior spirits. Metaphysical speculation tries 
to resolve all constituted things into their general elements, 
and those elements into the ultimate mysterious element of 
substance, thus leaving behind the various orders and modes 
of being, to contemplate being itself in its essence. It retires 
awhile from the consideration of truth, as predicated of parti- 
cular subjects, to explore those unalterable and universal re- 
lations of ideas, which must be the primary principles of all 
truth. It is not content to acknowledge or to seek the respec- 
tive causes of the effects which crowd every part of the crea- 
tion, but would ascertain the very nature of the relation be- 
tween cause and effect. Not satisfied to infer a Deity from 
the wise and beautiful order of the universe, it would descry 
the proof of this sublime fact in the bare existence of an atom. 
To ascertain the laws according to which we think, is a grati- 
fying kind of knowledge, but metaphysical speculation asks 
what is it to thinks and what is that power which performs so 
strange an operation ; it also attempts to discover the nature 
of the connexion of this mysterious agent with a corporeal 
machine ; and of the relation in which it really stands to that 
external world, concerning which it receives so many millions 
of ideas. In short, metaphysical inquiry attempts to trace 
things to the very first stage in which they can, even to the 
most penetrating intelligences, be the subjects of a thought, a 
doubt, or a proposition ; that profoundest abstraction, where 



210 LORD KAMES. 

they stand on the first step of distinction and remove from 
nonentity, and where that one question might be put concern- 
ing them, the answer to which would leave no further ques- 
tion possible. And having thus abstracted and penetrated to 
the state of pure entity, the speculation would come back, 
tracing it into all its modes and relations ; till at last metaphy- 
sical truth, approaching nearer and nearer to the sphere of our 
immediate knowledge, terminates on the confines of distinct 
sciences and obvious realities. 

Now it would seem evident that this inquiry into primary 
truth must surpass, in point of dignity, all other speculations. 
If any man could carry his discoveries as far, and make his 
proofs as strong, in the metaphysical world, as Newton did in 
the physical, he would be an incomparably greater man than 
even Newton. The charge, therefore, of being frivolous, 
alleged sometimes angrily, and sometimes scornfully, against 
this department of study, is, so far as the subjects are concern- 
ed, but a proof of the complete ignorance of those who make 
it. Ignorance may be allowed to say any thing ; but we are 
very much surprised, when we sometimes hear men of consid- 
erable thought and knowledge, declaring, almost uncondition- 
ally, against researches into pure metaphysical subjects ; and 
also insisting, that our reasonings on moral subjects must 
never, for a moment, accept the pernicious aid of metaphysi- 
cal distinctions. We cannot comprehend how it is possible 
for them to frequent the intellectual world, without often com- 
ing in view of some of the great questions peculiarly belong- 
ing to this department of thought ; such as those concerning 
the nature of the mind, the liberty or necessity of human 
action, the radical distinction between good and evil, space, 
duration, eternity, the creation of inferior beings, and the 
attributes of the Supreme. And we wonder that, if it were 
only to enjoy the sensation of being overwhelmed in sublime 
mystery, and of finding how much there is reserved to be 
learnt in a higher state of existence and intelligence, an in- 
quisitive mind should not, when these subjects are forced on 
the view, make a strong, though it were a transient, effort of 
investigation. Nor can we conceive how a man of the least 
sagacity can deeply examine any moral subject, without often 
finding himself brought to the borders of metaphysical ground ; 
and there perceiving very clearly that he must either enter 
on that ground, or leave his subject most partially and unsatis- 



LORD KAMES. 211 

fectorily discussed. All subjects have first principles, toward 
which an acute mind feels its investigation inevitably tending, 
and all first principles are, if investigated to their extreme re- 
finement, metaphysical. The tendency of thought toward the 
ascertaining of these first principles in every inquiry, as con- 
trasted with a disposition to pass (though perhaps very ele- 
gantly or rhetorically) over the surface of a subject, is one of 
the strongest points of distinction betvv^een a vigorous intellect 
and a feeble one. 

It is trae enough, to the grief of philosophers, and the 
humiliation of human ability, that but a very small degree of 
direct success has erer crowned these profound researches, or 
perhaps will ever crown them in the present state of our 
existence. It is also true, that an acute man who will abso- 
lutely prosecute the metaphysic of every subject to the last pos- 
sible extreme, with a kind of rebellion against the very laws 
and limits of nature^ in contempt of his senses, of experience, 
of the universal perceptions of mankind, and of divine revela- 
tion, may reason himself into a vacuity whore he will feel as 
if he were sinking out of the creation. Hume was such an 
example ; but we might cite Locke and Rcid, and some other 
illustrious men, who have terminated their long sweep of ab- 
stract thinkin^^ as much in the spirit of sound sense and 
rational belief as they began. 

Yet while we must attribute to weakness or ignorance the 
contempt or the terror of these inquiries, it is so evident from 
the nature of things, and the whole history of philosophy, that 
they mu5t in a great measure fail, when extended beyond cer- 
tain contracted iimlts, that it is less for the portion of direct 
metaphysical science which they can ascertain, than for their 
general eflbct on the thinking pov/ers, that we deem them a 
valuable part of inteliecLual discipline. Studies of this nature 
tend very m jch to augm3nt the power of discriminating clearly 
between ditfarent subjects, and ascertaining their analogies, 
dependencies, relative importance, and best method of inves- 
tigation. They enable the mind to dissipate the delusion of 
first appearances, a'.id detect fallacious subtleties of argument. 
Between the most superficial view of a subject and its most 
abstracted principles, there is a gradation of principles still 
more and more abstracted, conducting progressively, if any 
mind were strong enough to follow, to that profoundest princi- 
ple where inquiry must terminate for ever : now, though it be 



212 l/ORD KAMES, 

impossible to approach within the most distant glimmering 
sight of that principle, yet a mind sharpened by metaphysical 
investigation, will be able sometimes to penetrate to the 
second, third, or fourth place in this retiring gradation, and 
will therefore have a far more competent understanding of the 
subject, from being able to investigate it to this depth, than 
another mind which has been accustomed to content itself 
with an attention merely to the superficies, A man habitua- 
ted to this deeper examination of every subject of which he 
seriously thinks, will often be able, and entitled, to advance 
his propositions with a confidence to which the man that only 
thinks on the surface of a subject must be a stranger, unless 
indeed he can totally forget that there is any thing deeper than 
the surface ; but then he may very fairly be excused from 
making any propositions at all. 

On the whole, we are of opinion, that though it is most un- 
wise to dedicate the chief part of a studious life to metaphysi- 
cal speculation, except in the case of those few extraordinary 
minds which can carry this speculation so far as to render to 
mankind the service of practically ascertaining the limits 
which human ability cannot pass, a moderate portion of this 
study would be of the greatest use to all intellectual men, as a 
mode of acquiring, in the general exercise of their under- 
standings, at once the double advantage of comprehensive- 
ness and precision. 

While therefore we are doing honour to abstract science, 
for the superior talents which it requires in the investigator, 
for the augmented powers which it confers in the progress of 
study, and for the elevating dignity which it bestows in the suc- 
cessful result, we are willing to remember, that after all it is 
but of subordinate importance. And we cannot help admir- 
ing the wisdom of that arrangement, by which nothing that is 
truly essential to the well-being of man is denied to the exer- 
tion of such powers as man generally possesses. The truths 
connected with piety and the social duties, with the means of 
personal happiness, and the method of securing an ulterior 
condition of progressive perfection and felicity, lie at the very 
surface of moral inquiries; like the fruits and precious stores 
of the vegetable kingdom, they are necessary to supply inev- 
itable wants, and are placed, by Divine Benevolence, within 
the reach of the meanest individual. The secret treasures, 
however, of the moral, as of the physical world, lie deep and 



LORD KAMES. 213 

remote from casual observation, and are only yielded up to a 
series of skilful and laborious efforts : they are indeed wonder- 
ful and splendid ; they may gratify the ambition of the curious 
and ostentatious, and they may denote the gradations of men- 
tal nobility; they may even be applied to more useful pur- 
poses ; but they afford no substantial enjoyments, they consti- 
tute no part of the necessaries or comforts of existence ; a man 
who wants them, may yet be happy, contented, and secure ; 
and he who possesses them in profusion, may glitter in the 
array of intellectual opulence, yet pine, and perish. 

About the middle of his life Lord Kames became acquaint- 
ed with David Hume, who was considerably younger than 
himself, and who was just then making a manftd attempt for 
fame, and against religion, in the publication of his " Treatise 
of Human Nature." His letters describing the views and 
feelings which possessed his mind at that time, and which he 
seems to have retained with little alteration through life, ex- 
hibit but a very mean moral picture of the man. The printing 
of his "Philosophical Essays," Avhich Lord Kames dissuaded, 
gave occasion for his lordship's Ml appearance before the 
public as a philosopher, in his " Essays on the Principles of 
Morality and Natural Religion," in which he set himself to 
oppose the opinions of Hume. 

The intelligent reader will be anxious to meet with this 
book ; for he is given to expect, that the author makes out a 
fine account of human nature, as a well-poised, well-regulat- 
ed, and most harmonious moral system. He must be curious 
to see in what manner he disposes of the stupendous depravity, 
which through all ages has covered the earth with crimes and 
miseries : and how he has illustrated the grand and happy 
effects resulting from the general and permanent predominance 
of the selfish over the benevolent affections, from the imbeci- 
lity of reason and conscience as opposed to appetite, from the 
infinitely greater facility of forming and retaining bad habits 
than good ones, from the incalculable number of false opinions 
embraced instead of the true, and from the deprivation which 
is always found to steal very soon into the best institutions. 
He must, surely, be no less solicitous to see the dignity and 
certainty of the moral sense verified in the face of the well- 
known fact, that there is no crime which has not, in the ab- 
sence of revelation, been committed, in one part of the world 
or another, without the smallest consciousness of guilt. 
10* 



214 LORD KAMES. 

It is too evident that our philosopher felt it a light matter, 
that his speculations were sometimes in opposition to the book 
which Christians deem of paramount authority. He would 
pretend, in a general way, a kind of deference for that book, 
and yet go on with his theories and reasonings all the same. 
In this we consider his conduct, and the conduct of many other 
philosophic men, as most absurd, setting aside its irreligion. 
The book which avows itself, by a thousand solemn and ex- 
plicit declarations, to be a communication from heaven, is either 
what it thus declares itself to be, or a most monstrous impos- 
ture. If these philosophers hold it to be an imposture, and 
therefore an execrable deception put on the sense of mankind, 
how contemptible it is to see them practising their civil cringe, 
and uttering phrases of deference ! If they admit it to be what 
it avows itself, how detestable is their conduct in advancing 
positions and theories, with a cool disregard of the highest 
authority, confronting and contradicting them all the while ! 
And if the question is deemed to be yet in suspense, how ridi- 
culous it is to be thus building up speculations and systems, 
pending a cause which may require their demolition the instant 
it is decided ! Who would not despise, or pity, a man eagerly 
raising a fine house on a piece of ground at the very time in 
doubtful litigation ? Who would not have laughed at a man, 
who should have published a book of geography, with minute 
descriptions and costly maps, of distant regions and islands, at 
the very time that Magellan or Cook was absent on purpose 
to determine their position, or even verify their existence ? If 
Lord Kames was doubtful on the question of the truth or im- 
posture of the most celebrated book in the world, a question 
of which the decision, the one way or the other, is the indis- 
pensable preliminary to so many speculations, why did he not 
bend his utmost strength to decide it ? This had been a work 
of far more importance than any of those to which he applied 
himself: of far more importance than his reasonings on the 
existence of a Deity; since the very object of these reasonings 
was to prove, that we have a natural, intuitive, and invincible 
assurance, that there is a God, and therefore, in fact, that we 
need no reasoning or writing on the subject. Or if he would 
not make an eftbrt toward the decision of this great question 
himself, why should he not lie quiet till the other examiners 
should decide it ; cautious, even to anxiety, not to hazard, in 
the mean while, a single position of such a nature as must 



LORD KAMES. 215 

assume that the question was already decided, and decided 
against the pretensions of the book professing to be of Divine 
authority ? But such positions he made no ditficulty of advanc- 
ing, especially in what was called, at that time, his magnum 
opus, the " Sketches of the History of Man." 

The leading doctrine of this work appears to be, that man 
was originally in the state of a most ignorant savage, and that 
all his knowledge and improvements, subsequently attained, 
as well in morals and theology, as in arts and sciences, have 
resulted from the progressive development of his natural pow- 
ers by natural means : in this same work, notwithstanding, 
the author affected to pay some deference to the Mosaic his- 
tory. This idle and irreligious notion was retained and cher- 
ished, in spite of the able reasoning of Dr. Doig, of which 
Lord VVoodhouselee gives a lucid abstract, followed by a 
curious account of the commencement of the acquaintance 
between Dr. Doig and Lord Kames. 

The other distinguished literary performance of Lord Kames, 
was the " Elements of Criticism." The biographer intro- 
duces his remarks on this work, by a very curious inquiry into 
the history of philosophical criticism, the invention of which 
he attributes to the Scottish philosopher, after an acute exam- 
ination of the claims of both the ancients and moderns. We 
are very much entertained by this ingenious investigation ; 
though Lord Woodhouselee's own acknowledgment of the near 
approaches to this species of criticism in one or two of the 
ancients, and the actual, though very imperfect, development 
of it in several modern writers, especially Akenside, warrants 
our hesitation to assign to Lord Kames the title of inventor 
which is wrested, by a rather nice distinction, from Aristotle. 
In the " Treatise of Rhetoric," Aristotle gave an elaborate 
analysis of the passions, and of the sources of pain aiKl pleasure, 
expressly with a view to instruct writers and speakers how to 
interest those passions. If this was not actually deducing, it 
was making it easy for the persons so instructed to deduce, 
from the very constitution of the human mind, the essential 
laws of good writing and eloquent speaking. It was showing 
that excellence in these arts must consist, in the adaptation of 
all their performances to the principles of human nature. By 
thus illustrating the manner in which the human mind can be 
subjected to the powers of eloquence, Aristotle laid at least the 
foundation of philosophical criticism. It is true that this could 



216 LORD KAMES. 

not so strictly be called criticism till it should be carried a 
little further, till a number of precise inferences from this ex- 
plication of the passions should be propounded, as laws of cri- 
ticism, and these laws be formally applied to the productions 
of genius. But this was nearly a matter of course when the 
first great work of elucidating the passions was accomplished ; 
•when the nature of the materials was ascertained, it dictated 
at once the mode of operating on them. By a very slight 
change of form, each proposition, relative to the passions, 
might have been made a critical rule, applicable to its respec- 
tive part of the works to be addressed to them. This had been 
a very slender effort for the great philosopher, if he had chosen 
to pursue his subject so far ; and therefore it does not claim 
any very high degree of fame, if a modern has done what he 
omitted. We allow, however, to Lord Kames, the " merit of 
having given to philosophical criticism the form of a science, 
by reducing it to general principles, methodizing its doctrines, 
and supporting them everywhere by the most copious and 
beautiful illustrations," 



DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 217 

VIII. 

DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 



Four Discourses on Subjects relating to the Amusement of the 
Stage. Preached at Great St. Mary's Church, Cambridge, 
on Sunday, September 25, and Sunday, October 2, 1808; 
with copious Supplementary Notes. By Jahes Plumptrb, 
B.D., Fellow of Clare-Hall. 

It is not expressed in the title-page, that these discourses 
were preached, and are published, with an intention hostile to 
the stage ; but the reader can have no doubt as to this point, we 
presume, when informed that they are dedicated to the Vice- 
Chancellor of the University of Cambridge after having re- 
ceived his approbation, that the author is an admirer of some 
of our most serious and orthodox divines, that he appears to be 
actuated by a sincere wish to do good, and that the discourses 
are founded on no other than the following texts : — " Whether 
therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the 
glory of God." — " Be not deceived, evil communications cor- 
rupt good manners." — " Let not foolish talking, nor jesting, 
which are not convenient, be once named among you, as be- 
cometh saints." — " To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth 
it not, to him it is sin." A selection of texts so pointedly ap- 
plicable, will appear to indicate the preacher's correct view of 
his subject ; and shall we not incur the suspicion of wantonly 
offending against the third injunction, when we state, that, 
notwithstanding all these reasons for a contrary presumption, 
Mr. Plumptre's discourses are meant as a formal defence of 
the stage ? 

Merely that a minister of the Christian religion should have 
considered it as within the scope and duty of his sacred func- 
tion to undertake such a defence, will not be a fact of sufficient 
novelty, in our times, to excite surprise ; for it would be un- 
grateful to charge it on defect of reverend instruction, if we 



218 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 

do not know that the play-house is one of our best Christian 
institutions. But there is something strikingly new in hear- 
ing a vindication of the stage from a clergyman, who connects 
it with a serious admonition that life should be employed in a 
preparation for eternity, with a zealous inculcation of the 
apostolic rule of doing all things to the glory of God, with an 
admission that the general quality of polite literature is decid- 
edly adverse to Christian principles, and with an extended and 
very instructive illustration of the prevalence of this adverse 
spirit in even the least exceptionable part of the English drama. 
If the reader's impression of the incompatibility of what we 
have here reported to him as combined, should lead him to 
suspect affectation in the religious parts of the compound, we 
must assure him there are the strongest marks of sincerity. 
This being believed, his surmises towards an explanation of 
such a phenomenon will probably terminate in a conjecture, 
that, in the preacher's youth, the drama must have inspired a 
passion so deep as to become like one of the original princi- 
ples of his mind, which therefore the judgment could never 
eradicate, nor ever inspect without an involuntary bias operat- 
ing like a spell. And this is the explanation furnished by the 
preacher's long dedication, in which he adverts to the leading 
circumstances of his life, by way of accounting for his wl-iting 
a book on such a subject, and with such a design. 

In course of time he entered, at college, on the studies pre- 
paratory to the clerical profession, and obtained a parochial 
charge, in which his professional duties and studies began 
entirely to engross his thoughts, " and yielding," he says, " to 
the prejudices of the world, I determined to relinquish in a 
great measure the amusement of the stage." He sold a large 
dramatic library in order to purchase better books, among 
which were Mrs. More's works, including her dialogue on 
amusements, and her most excellent preface to her tragedies ; 
these tracts had a great influence on his mind, and for some 
years he wholly abstained from the amusement of the theatre. 
" The circumstances of his parish" suggested to him the pos- 
sible utility of modifying to a moral purpose the most popular 
convivial songs, of which he has subsequently printed several 
volumes, with the required expurgations and additions, under 
the title Vocal Repository. This occupation revived his at- 
tention to the dra'ma, which he had never been persuaded en- 
tirely to condemn, though his opinion of it was somewhat al- 



DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 219 

tered. In an interval of professional employment, he medita- 
ted a set of lectures to be delivered at the University, partly 
with a view to the reformation of the stage. This design was 
not executed ; but an opportune occasion was offered for putting 
some of the collected materials into the form of sermons, to 
which, when printed, another portion could be appended as 
notes. The inducement to adopt the form of sermons was, 
the hope that they might, as public addresses, be of service to 
other clergymen, situated" in the neighbourhood of the various 
theatres in this country. 

Toward the close of this dedicatory introduction, which we 
have regarded it as a point of justice to notice thus particular- 
ly, the author distinctly meets, what he necessarily anticipat- 
ed, the censure which will be apt to fall on a clergyman for 
composing a volume on such a subject. His apology is, that 
this is the only way in which he may hope to redeem, in some 
sense, the time which he regrets he has wasted in former dra- 
matic studies. He esteems his knowledge of the subject as 
very dearly purchased ; but actually having this knowledge, 
he thinks it is his duty to put it to the use of displaying the 
moral character of the English drama, of attempting its refor- 
mation, and we may add, of correcting the opinions of those 
austere Christians, who insist on the entire destruction of what 
he thinks capable of being made a " powerful engine to pro- 
mote the cause of virtue." 

The first discourse proposes to argue the question, "wheth- 
er the stage be a thing lawful in itself;" but we are not quite 
satisfied that this question takes the subject in the right point 
of view. What is meant by the stage " in itself," or abstract- 
edly considered ? If by the stage, described under these terms 
of limitation, the written drama were meant, no question could 
be more easily decided, than whether it be lawful to write and 
to read useful and ingenious things in a dramatic form ; no 
question, therefore, could be more needless, and we do not see 
why several pages of the work should have been occupied in 
answering it. But understanding by the stage literally the 
theatre and its performances, we do not exactly comprehend 
what is meant by the question whether it be lawful "in itself." 
The estimate of the good or evil of the theatre must necessari- 
ly be founded on the combined consideration of a number of 
particulars ; as the qualities of human nature in general, to- 
gether with their modifications in any one age or nation, — the 



220 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 

effect on the human mind of exhausting its passions on ficti- 
tious objects, the character of that part of society that will at 
all times be most addicted to amusements, and will chiefly sup- 
port them, — the natural attendants and consequences of a pas- 
sion for splendid amusements, — the tendency and the attend- 
ant circumstances of immense nocturnal assemblages of people 
in great towns, — the quality of the works of the great national 
dramatic writers, that must necessarily form the main stock of 
the theatre, (till writers shall be put in requisition to dramatize 
and versify the Homilies and the Whole duty of Man,) — the 
probable moral character of a set of men and women employ- 
ed under the circumstances inseparable from a company of 
players, — and the vast expense, original and permanent, of the 
whole theatrical establishment. All these and other particu- 
lars are involved in the question of the lawfulness of the stage ; 
and therefore we think any attempt to discuss that lawfulness 
in the abstract, or "in itself," would too much resemble a dis- 
cussion of the lawfulness of war abstractedly from all consider- 
ation of national enmity, of battle, wounds, and slaughter, 'of 
the barbarizing effect on its agents, of the misery of the coun- 
tries where it prevails, and of national expense and ruin. We 
do not say that these two things are perfectly parallel ; but we 
mean that the moral estimate of the stage must be formed on a 
view of all those circumstances, which are naturally relative to 
it, which are essential to its existence, or with which in point 
of fact it has invariably been connected. 

Admitting most fully, (as every person must, who possesses 
ordinary moral and religious perceptions,) the gross depravity 
of the theatre, in the collective character of its constituents, the 
plays, the players, and a large portion of the spectators, and 
deploring its widely pernicious influence, our preacher yet en- 
deavours, by distinguishing between the use and abuse of a 
thing, to defend the theatre "in itself" against those, who, 
from all they have seen and can anticipate, pronounce it radi- 
cally and essentialaly mischief. He has told us, from Eccle- 
siasticus, that " as a nail sticketh fast between the stones, so 
doth sin stick close between buying and selling," that " strong 
drinks and wine" have been abused by intemperance, and that 
even the public worship of God has been perverted to wicked- 
ness ; and maintains, unanswerably, that we are not therefore, 
to prohibit buying and selling, and the use of Avine, and the 
worship of God. This argument from analogy ought, at its 



DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 221 

weakest point, to prove that the divine providence has, in the 
order of nature, made a specific direct provision for a play- 
house ; and, as its strongest point, to prove that the pernicious 
effects of the play-house should be calmly left to the govern- 
ment of God, as an evil become incidental through human de- 
pravity to one of his own appointments, which we are not the 
less bound in duty to observe because it is liable to such a per- 
version. It should also prove, that the cessation of acting plays 
would inflict an evil tantamount to breaking up the regular busi- 
ness and intercourse of society. 

But not to dwell on such an unfortunate argument, we will 
say a word or two on the propriety of giving the denomination 
of abuses to the evils uniformly attending the stage. When we 
speak of the abuses of a thing, we cannot mean less than that 
the thing in question is at least fitted to do greatly more good 
than harm, even in the present state of the human mind and of 
society ; we understand of it that good is its natural general ef- 
fect, and evil the incidental, man being as he is. We repeat 
this conditional point ; for, if the thing in question be not calcu- 
lated mainly to do good till human society shall have grown in- 
comparably more virtuous, and thus attained a state capable of 
neutralizing its operation, or even converting it into something 
beneficial, it is plainly, for any present use, absolutely bad, ne- 
cessarily bad, in its regular operation ; and to call this opera- 
tion an abuse is a disingenuous and deceptive language. Now 
our preacher, while reprobating the obvious mischiefs of the 
stage under the denomination of" abuses," insists that it is not- 
withstanding adapted, and may by a very practicable reform 
be brought, to be of the greatest moral utility, in the present 
condition of society. It would be going very much beyond the 
limits of our office, to enumerate the principal arguments, (in- 
deed they are amply quoted by Mr. Plumptre) advanced by seri- 
ous and intelligent men in opposition to his opinion. The best 
works on the subject are very well known ; and we think the 
chief good that will be efiected by the book before us will be, to 
induce some of its readers to examine them with more atten- 
tion. The most material points of the argument were hinted 
above, in one of the preceding sentences ; and in slightly adver- 
ting to several of them we shall employ but very few more. 

It must be quite obvious for what purpose it is that society 
chooses to have a theatre, and by what part of society it must 
be principally supported. And Mr. Plumptre knows it would 



222 DEFENCE OP THE STAGE. 

be disingenuous trifling to pretend, that the theatre is raised 
and supported, with any other view on the part of the public, 
than that of amusement. A very few individuals may occasion- 
ally, or even habitually, attend it for the purpose of philosophi- 
cal observation ; but even if these were sincerely anxious to ap- 
ply the knowledge of human nature there acquired to the ser- 
vice of virtue and religion, which is rarely the case, the cir- 
cumstance would be inexpressibly too trivial to be mentioned 
against the notorious fact, that the part of the community that 
require and frequent a theatre, do it for no purpose even the 
most distantly related to moral improvement. This would be 
testified, if it needed any testimony, by every one who has lis- 
tened to the afternoon conversation of a party arranging and 
preparing to go to the play, and to the retrospective discussion 
of this party during the 11 o'clock breakfast on the following 
morning ; or by any one who has listened to the remarks made 
around him in any part of the boxes, pit, or galleries. The 
persons, who are intent on moral or intellectual improvement, 
will be found occupied in a very different manner, inspecting 
the works of the great historians, philosophers, moralists, or 
divines, or holding rational conversations with their families or 
friends, or even (if theyjudge instruction really is to be obtain- 
ed from that source,) reading the most celebrated dramatic 
works in their own or another language, and with a far more 
judicious and scrutinizing attention than any one exerts amidst 
the thousand interfering and beguiling circumstances of the 
theatre. Now if amusement is the grand object sought at the 
play-house, the object on copiously ministering to which its ex- 
istence wholly depends, it must, to preserve that existence, 
adapt itself completely to the taste of that part of society that is 
devoted to amusement, and will pay its price, in time, health, 
and money. And what sort of persons are they that compose 
this part of society? It really might have been accounted su- 
perfluous to say that they are necessarily the trifling and the 
immoral. They are such of the wealthy as have neither oc- 
cupation nor benevolence ; the devotees of fashion; the most 
thoughtless part of the young, together with what are called 
young men of spirit, who want a little brisk folly as an inter- 
lude to their more vicious pursuits ; loungers of all sorts ; 
tradesmen who neglect their business ; persons who, in do- 
mestic relations, have no notion of cultivating the highest so- 
cial and intellectual interests ; and old debauchees, together 



DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 223 

"witli the wretched class of beings, whose numbers, vices, and 
miseries, they can still be proud to augment. It is by the part 
of the community composed of these classes that the theatre is 
mainly supported ; and these it must gratify, or it will perish. 
And if it must gratify this part of the community, of what moral 
quality must its exhibitions be ? Is it possible to maintain, 
with a grave face, that those exhibitions can be lessons of pure 
morality, and even piety, — according to our author's injunction 
and professed hope that " the stage shall go hand in hand with 
the pulpit ?" The stage will have a beneficial influence, he 
says, when the writers, actors, and frequenters compose, and 
act, and attend plays " with a view to the glory of God," (a 
most original association of ideas) — and when they preserve 
amidst these occupations a deep concern for the " salvation of 
their souls." Now can he believe that there are twenty fre- 
quenters of the play-house in all England, who could hear such 
a state of mind insisted on as necessary even in the common 
course of life, without sneering at such notions as rank method- 
ism ; or who would fail to mutter a charge of stark madness, 
if seriously told it was a necessary state of mind in attending 
the theatre ? Is it not fully settled in the minds of all classes 
of its fi-equenters, that it is a place of perfect immunity from 
grave thought and converse with conscience, and from all pu- 
ritanism, cant, sermonizing, saintship, godliness, sober repre- 
sentations of life and duty, and squeamish modesty, — excepting 
so far as some or all of these may be introduced for ridicule, in 
which mode of introduction, indeed, they are probably greater 
favourites with an English theatrical audience than all other 
subjects ? In short, are not the entertainments of the theatre 
resorted to and delighted in as something confessedly, avow- 
edly, and systematically opposite to what is understood by its 
frequenters to have formed the chief concern, the prominent 
and unpopular distinction, of the most devout and holy men, of 
dying penitents, of Christian apostles, of all the persons most 
deeply solicitous for the "glory of God," and the " salvation of 
their souls f Mr. Plumptre will fully agree with us, for he 
has himself very forcibly shown, that, with certain fluctuations, 
and some degree of modern amendment, in the article of de- 
corum, this has always been the character of the stage, and is 
the character of the great body of our written drama. And 
why has this been uniformly the character? Are we to be- 
lieve that the writers and actors, with an unparalleled con- 



224 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 

tempt of self-interest, have been for several hundred yearg 
forcing on their grand and sole patron, the public, a species of 
dramatic exhibitions disapproved by that patron 1 On the con- 
trary, these writers and players have always been to the full as 
sagacious with respect to their own interest, as any other class of 
persons who are to prosper or famish according to the acceptance 
or disapproval of what they furnish to the public market ; and 
quite as obsequious in accommodating to the public taste. In a 
few instances, indeed, it may have been attempted to make the 
stage a pure Christian moralist, and a sort of half Christian di- 
vine ; and the attempt has failed. It deserved to fail ; for, if a 
manufacturer in any department absolutely will make his goods 
of a quality and form quite different from what he knows the pub- 
lic have uniformly required in that sort of article, nobody com- 
passionates him for the consequences. And we would ask Mr. 
Plumptre, where is the reasonableness and humanity of re- 
quiring the writers and actors of plays to commit a profession- 
al suicide by provoking the disgust and indignation of their 
supporters ? The present time shows what an imperious as- 
pect the public, that is, the play-going public, can assume when 
they are not pleased ; and if, instead of the trifling alteration of a 
little advance in price, there were to be introduced a moral 
change to one half the extent demanded by our preacher, a 
change which would instantly give the denomination of " Me- 
thodist Theatre," can any one believe this genteel and vulgar 
rabble would not bellow to a still nobler tune if possible, and 
fairly baffle at last the utmost rhetoric of the journalists in at- 
tempting, even with the aid of Miltonic diction, to describe the 
"confusion" still "worse confounded?" Parson Kemble, or 
Saint Cooke, after having once appeared, seriously, in the Gos- 
pel Scene, would prefer taking the second turn in the pillory 
at Charing-cross. 

In thus predicting the treatment awaiting the stage when 
turned methodist, we have not misrepresented our preacher 
as to the extent of the conversion which he demands. He 
insists, with respect to the drama, as it ought to be insisted 
with respect to every institution which is to be retained in 
society, that its entire spirit and tendency must be made 
strictly coincident with the Christian religion ; and he per- 
fectly agrees with Mrs. More and several other writers, that, 
besides all the more gross and tangible immorality adhering 
to our drama, there is a decidedly antichristian quality pre- 



DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 225 

vailing through almost its whole mass, so that even most of 
its greatest beauties please with a noxious lustre. Consis- 
tently, therefore, he requires the stage to be purified from its 
many modes of heathenism, from its erroneous conceptions of 
divine justice and the atonement of guilt, from its profane 
language, from its pernicious notions of honour, from its en- 
couragement and extenuations of suicide and duelling, from 
its extravagant and often corrupt representations of love, and 
from its indecorum. And all these things, we are to believe, 
may be swept away in the very face of the persons who are 
paying expressly for their continuance ; and by whom the 
pure Christian contraries of all these things will be received 
with abhorrence, unless, while the transmutation is taking 
place on the stage, a sudden conversion also visits the minds 
of the audience, as when Peter was preaching. But no, says 
our author, the change is to be gradual ; something is al- 
ready effected, and " we must go on to perfection." It is true 
that a very slight superficial amendment has taken place, in 
avoiding the excessive undisguised grossness which prevailed 
on the stage in a former century ; and this is because the age 
is grown more delicate, not, probably, because the audience 
are much more moral ; for does Mr. Plumptre really believe 
that the theatre now contains a less proportion of profligate 
men and women than in former times ? But taking this slight 
superinduced refinement at whatever he can seriously think it 
worth, we have his own testimony that the pervading heathen- 
ism and profaneness, the detestable moral principles, and 
the romantic extravagance, remain nearly undiminished ; and 
we would therefore ask him how many ages, at this rate of 
improvement, we are to be waiting for the stage to attain 
even the point of neutrality between good and evil of moral 
and religious influence. And should not the melancholy 
thought of so many tens of thousands, whose principles, with 
respect to the most important subjects and concerns, are to 
be acted upon by a powerfully pernicious influence in the 
course of this long period, have impelled him to exhort his 
auditors and readers to an instant withdrawment of all coun- 
tenance and support from one of the worst enemies of human 
virtue and happiness ? Instead of which, we lament to find 
a minister of the Christian religion advising the respectable 
inhabitants of places where plays are acted, to attend them, 
in order to influence the selection of the pieces and the man- 
ners of the company. 



226 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 

Against those who assert the radical evil of the stage, and 
instead of devising remedies urge the duty of entirely relin- 
quishing it, he raises a strange, and what he seems to think 
conclusive argument, from the simple fact that the stage is 
still in existence : as if he would say, It must be a good thing, 
or capable of being made so, and claims that we should all 
join hand and heart to support and improve it, because — all 
efforts to put it down have been unavailing. 

It may be hardly worth while to notice, that there seems 
here an admission that the people are not good enough to re- 
form, any more than they are to give up, a corrupt stage ; or 
to observe, that it is unfair to complicate the question whether 
individuals ought to abandon the theatre, with the question 
whether the state ought to suppress it. But as to the fact 
which he makes into an argument, namely, that the stage 
still exists, we may properly say to Mr. Plumptre, What is 
that to you, or to us ? There exist also dens of gamblers, 
and gangs of thieves, and brothels, and clubs for gluttony, 
drunkenness, and ribaldry ; but you or we are not therefore 
called upon to study the better regulation of these associations, 
and sometimes to go among them as a " check on their im- 
proprieties." — The complaint that the adversaries of the stage 
have not employed "conciliating " measures, is passing strange, 
as coming from a Christian divine, who tells us, that one of 
those adversaries (Bedford) has cited in his book ''^nearly se- 
ven thousand instances of impiety and immorality from the 
plays in use at that time, and some of which, (though in rather 
an amended state) still keep a place upon the stage," p. 36. 
If such a hideous monster was a thing capable of being " vili- 
fied," or deserving to be " conciliated," what is it on this side 
the infernal pit that we can lawfully make relentless war 
upon ? 

Our argument above has been, that it is impossible for the 
stage to become good, in any such Christian sense as Mr. 
Plumptre requires ; because its character must be faithfully 
congenial with that of its supporters, and they chiefly consist 
of the more trifling, irreligious, and immoral part of the com- 
munity. But perhaps our author thinks that if the stage, by 
a resolute effort of its directors, were quite to change its char- 
acter, and become the mirror of Christian sentiments and 
morals, it might obtain a better class of supporters, and thus 
afford to lose the frivolous and the dissolute. — And if this 



DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 227 

were possible, is it desirable ? We are not convinced it 
would be any great advantage gained to the happiness of so- 
ciety, if we were to see the great temple of wisdom and 
virtue in Covent Garden lined with an auditory of right rev- 
erend bishops, zealous ministers, and the worthiest part of 
their flocks, drest in sober faces and decent apparel, rank 
above rank, up to the region of what used to be called " the 
gods ;" if we were to see the pit occupied by a battalion of 
quakers ; if worthy domestic men, who have been accus- 
tomed to pass their evenings in reading with their wives and 
sisters, after half an hour's sport with their children, were 
to commence the practice of either sliding off* alone, or tak- 
ing their families along with them to the new rendezvous of 
saints and philosophers ; or if virtuous young men qualifying 
by diligent study for important professions, and young women 
qualifying for their wives, were seen flocking to the dramatic 
oracle to inquire how to combine wisdom and love. But if 
all this were ever so much " a consummation devoutly to be 
wished," it would never be attained ; and the mansion of the 
christened Apollo might be surrendered to the bats, unless he 
would forswear his newly-adopted and unprofitable faith, and 
again invite the profane and profligate. The orderly, indus- 
trious, studious, benevolent, and devout, would never, in any 
state of the theatre, frequent it in sufficient numbers to defray 
the cost of dresses and wax candles. And besides, what be- 
comes, during this hopeful experiment, of that worse part of 
the community, which the stage, according to our author, 
was to have helped the gospel to reform 1 They are the 
while wandering away, perverse and hapless beings ! from 
the most precious school ever opened for the corrective disci- 
pline of sinners. But the place, originally intended to please 
them, will not long be occupied by the usurping morality that 
would assume to mend them. Like the unclean spirit, they 
will soon re-enter the swept and garnished house, and even, 
like him, bring auxiliary companions, the more effectually to 
assert whose house it is. We will not waste more words. 
Mr. Plumptre knows that no theatre could support itself under 
the odium of maintaining an explicit hostility against not only 
direct grossness and vice, but all antichristian principles of 
morality. It is a ruined thing, if not only the women of the 
town, and the vile gangs of journeymen and gentlemen blades 
that frequent the place to joke with them, purchase them, 



228 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE, 

or insult them, but also the more decorous holders of a fash- 
ionable moral creed, are to be dosed there with Christian 
medicaments, and fumigated off with an effluvium a hundred 
times more nauseous to them than the smell of the burning 
fish was to the goblin that haunted Tobias's bride. As long 
as there is a play-house, it will and must be assumed, as 
their legitimate place of resort, by the least serious and the 
most irreligious and profligate class of the nation. Where else 
indeed should they resort ] — to the evening lecture at church 
or at the conventicle 1 — Thus the stage, so far from contri- 
buting to promote the ascendency of good over evil in society, 
will be the faithful attendant and ally of the evil, at once liv- 
ing on it and ministering to it, just so long as a sufficient 
measure of it shall exist in the shape of vain and profligate 
persons to support the amusement, and perishing at length 
when Christianity shafl have left too few of these persons for 
this purpose. Or shall we suppose it will then arise and 
flourish afresh under a renovated Christianized character ? 
That is to say, shall we suppose, that at such a happy period, 
it will be deemed one of the worthiest efforts of virtue and 
religion to raise and furnish edifices at the expense of £150,000 
apiece, and maintain in each of them, at a cost equal to that 
of several hospitals, or of some fifty or a hundred of Lancas- 
ter's schools, an establishment just for the purpose of em- 
ploying a number of persons to sham the name and dress of 
certain fictitious foreigners, or, if you please, good home-bred 
Christians, and recite a course of lines from a book which 
the audience could have quietly read at home ; and, if they 
are tragic lines, read, according to the opinion of Dr. John- 
son, with a deeper impression ? 

This view of the necessary character of the stage forms but 
a narrow section of the argument against it ; and we have 
dwelt on it, not with the design of any thing so absurd as de. 
bating the general subject, in an article of a journal, but for 
the particular purpose of exposing Mr. Plumptres doctrine that 
" the evil attached to the stage is no part of its inherent quality, 
but arises merely from the abuse of it." — P. 7. With regard 
to many of the specific evils attendant on the theatre, he has 
himself done ample justice to the subject, partly by quoting, 
with a candour not to be surpassed, and deserving of the high- 
est applause, a number of the strongest passages from the 
adversaries of the stage, Collier, Law, Witherspoon, Styles, 



DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 229 

&c., and partly by an indictment drawn up by himself, of which 
the several counts are excellently illustrated and sustained by 
passages furnished by his extensive acquaintance with the 
English drama. These illustrations are placed in the mass 
of notes at the end of the book, which form a very entertain- 
ing and instructive miscellany. One portion of these notes is 
a kind of marshalling of great names against Mr. Styles, who 
had ventured to boast that the most venerable authorities, the 
most illustrious moralists and philosophers of all ages, have 
been enemies of the stage ; too rash a boast, as it should seem ; 
for Mr. Plumptre has proved that Bishop Rundle of most pious 
celebrity, that Mr. Cumberland, and Mr. Dibdin, and a 
Mrs. Douglas, which last person tells " the theologians and 
philosophers " they have no business to say a word about a 
subject so much above their faculties as the merits of the 
drama, — that these illustrious authorities are in favour of the 
stage. Not, however, that these are the only names in array ; 
for he jcites, on the same side, opinions or implications vari- 
ously modified and limited, from Addison, Blackmore, Tillot- 
son. Seed, Hanway, Johnson, Gilpin, and Gisborne. It is 
irksome enough to see quoted from such a writer as this last, 
"the stage ought to recommend itself as the nurse of virtue." 
In another part of the book it is quoted from him, that there is 
one quarter from which the purification of the stage, with 
respect to all offences against modesty, " might be effected at 
once. To those who act under a royal license, a single hint 
from Royal x\uthority would be sufficient." And why then, 
we ask, has not this purification been effected ? We might 
ask too, whether it is any part of the purification which this 
" hint " is to accomplish, to banish from the stage persons 
whose whole life is an offence against modesty. 

We are ashamed to find a Christian minister vindicating, 
under any circumstances, the impious practice of addressing 
the Deity on the stage. 

" Many, indeed," (says Mr. Plumptre,) " have doubted and denied the 
propriety of addresses to the Deity in representations, because they are not 
realities. But, if a character be introduced, as an example for our imita- 
lion, in such a circumstance, as, were he in real life, trust in God and 
prayer to him would be a duty, provided it be done with reverence, it does 
not appear to be a mockery and in vain, but a highly useful lesson. Are 
we not too little accustomed, too much ashamed to let ourselves be seen, 
or known to be on our knees before God, in real life ? We are commanded, 
indeed, not to pray in public, for the sake of being seen of men ; for the 
11 



230 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE. 

motive ought to be to please God ; but we are commanded to let our lighd 
BO shine before men, that they may see our good works, and glorify our 

FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN." P. 29. 

We must think with Mr. Styles, that " a fictitious charac- 
ter on the stage has nothing to do with heaven." The per- 
sonation of such a character in the act of prayer endeavours 
to pass itself for some very unde finable species of^ reality, and 
claims to excite nearly the same feelings that reality would 
do. It is intended, therefore, that the prayer in question shall 
be regarded rather as a real act of piety, than as the mere 
historical reading or reciting, if we may so express ourselves, 
of a prayer supposed to have been uttered by the character 
whom the player personates. This being the case, the player 
does assume to make, and the audience are called to witness, 
an actual address to the Deity, expressive of sentiments, and 
relative to a situation, which are totally fictitious ; and this we 
think the vilest impiety. 

As to the benefit arising from seeing examples of mingling 
piety with the concerns of life, the playhouse, with all its mass 
of profaneness and ribaldry, must be a marvellous proper place 
for making the exhibition, and receiving the edification* 



FRANKLIN S CORRESPONDENCE. 231 

IX. 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, LL.D,^ 
F.R.S., 6^0. Minister Plenijjotentiary from the United States 
of America at the Court of France, and for the Treaty of 
Peace and Independence mith Great Britain, ^^c. t^c. Com- 
prising a Series of Letters on Miscellaneous, Literary, and 
Political Subjects, written between the Years 1753 and 1790 ; 
illustrating the Memoirs of his Public and Private Life ; 
and developing the Secret History of his political Trans- 
actions and Negotiations, Now first published from the 
Originals, by his Grandson William Temple Franklin. 

This ample assemblage of letters is intended as a sequel 
to the Memoirs of Dr. Franklin, written by himself. Or rather, 
it appears as constituting the latter half of that work, and is 
designated as the second volume, though preceding by a con- 
siderable interval of time the publication of the regular nar- 
rative. 

The reader will feel little disposition to complain of the 
withholding of all information relative to the manner in which 
these letters could have been collected, the repository where 
many of them must long have lain, the proportion, in number, 
of those that have been suppressed, to that of these which are 
produced, or the question whether any considerable liberties 
have been taken in suppressing parts and passages of these. 
He will acknowledge that quite a sufficient number, and per- 
haps somewhat more, are given, that they embrace a con- 
siderable diversity of subjects, that they afford decisive internal 
evidence of authenticity, and that they very efiectually display 
the talents and character of the writer. 

The collection is distributed into three parts, — letters on 
miscellaneous subjects — letters on American politics — and let- 
ters on the negotiations for peace. In each part they are put 



232 franklin's coriiespondence. 

in chronological series, and therefore they are placed as far as 
the shorter series extend back in time, in three parallel courses, 
thus bringing the writer thrice through the same stages of his 
life and employments ; and that, too, after the reader may be 
presumed to have passed through them once already in the 
narrative. This is the best arrangement for facilitating the 
reader's acquisition of the historical information to be derived 
from the political portions of the correspondence ; but it less 
comports with a strictly biographical purpose, since, instead 
of our beholding, during the progress, the whole character and 
the diversitied agency of the man, we are shown only one 
section or side, if we may so express it, of that character and 
agency at once, and are brought back to go with him again, 
and yet again, through the same periods of his life, in order to 
have another and still another view of the same person. We 
would rather, if we conveniently might, take our whole view 
of the man in one progress, beholding him exhibited, at each 
step and stage, in each and all of his capacities, characteristics, 
and occupations. 

Perhaps, however, when a large portion of a man's letters 
relate solely to a grand national affair, which they very greatly 
elucidate, it may, after all, be as well to let the biographical 
purpose and interest become secondary, and make such a dis- 
position of them as will be most advantageous for understand- 
ing that affair of history. Indeed, if the display of the man 
were to be regarded as the chief object in this part of the cor- 
respondence, we are apprehensive that most readers might 
wish it retrenched, as less than one half the number of letters 
would have sufficed for that ; but let the object be a dis- 
closure of the secret history of the American Revolution, and 
nearly all of them may be found to have their pertinence and 
value. 

Taken all together, this collection of letters would, we 
think, in the absence of all other documents and representa- 
tions, afford sufficient means for a competent estimate of the 
writer. The character displayed by them is an unusual com- 
bination of elements. The main substance of the intellec- 
tual part of it, is a superlative good sense, evinced and acting 
in all the modes of that high endowment ; such as, — an in- 
tuitively prompt and perfect, and steadily continuing appre- 
hension ; a sagacity which with admirable ease strikes through 
all superficial and delusive appearances of things, to the 



233 

essence and the true relations ; a faculty of reasoning in a 
manner marvellously simple, direct, and decisive ; a power of 
reducing a subject or question to its plainest principles ; an 
unaffected daring to meet whatever is to be opposed, in an ex- 
plicit, direct manner, and in the point of its main strength ; a 
facility of applying familiar truths and self-evident proposi- 
tions, for resolving the most uncommon difficulties ; and a 
happy adroitness of illustration by parallel cases, supposed or 
real, the real ones being copiously supplied by a large and 
most observant acquaintance with the world. It is obvious 
how much this same accurate observation of the world would 
contribute to that power of interpreting the involuntary indi- 
cations of character, and of detecting motives and designs in 
all sorts of persons he had to deal with, and to that foresight 
of consequences in all practical concerns, in which he was 
probably never surpassed. It is gratifying to observe how 
soon he would see to the very bottom of the characters and 
schemes of plausible hypocrites and veteran statesmen, proud 
as they might be of the recollected number of their stratagems 
and their dupes, and so confident of their talents for under- 
mining and overreaching, that it took some of them a consid- 
erable time to become fully aware of the hazard of attempt- 
ing their practice upon the republican. Not one of their in- 
advertencies, or of their over-done professions, or of the in- 
consistencies into which the most systematic craft is liable to 
be sometimes betrayed, was ever lost upon him. There are 
in the course of these letters, curious and striking instances of 
personages of great pretension, and of other personages, 
seeking to effect their purposes, under the guise of making no 
pretension, putting him in full possession of their principles 
and designs, by means of circumstances which they little sus- 
pected to be betraying them, and for which he, if it was neces- 
sary, could be discreet enough to appear never the wiser. In 
process of time, however, courtiers, ministers, intriguers, and 
the diplomatic gentry, had the mist cleared from their facul- 
ties sufficiently to understand what kind of man it was they 
had to do with. 

There is one thing deficient in this collection, for the per- 
fect illustration of the independence of Dr. Franklin's judg- 
ment. He resided a long course of years in France, in the 
exercise of the most important official functions for the Amer- 
ican States, both during and after the war ; and a great major- 



234 

ity of the letters are dated at Passy, near Paris. As the 
French government was a most efficient friend to America in 
that momentous and perilous season, and her minister at the 
French Court experienced there all manner of respect and 
complaisance, it was natural enough he should speak in terms 
of considerable favour of that people and their governors, — 
of favour to certain extent, — quoad hoc. But we are in vain 
curious to know whether this complacency was any thing like 
limited by justice. We are compelled to doubt it, from ob- 
serving the many unqualified expressions of partiality to the 
French and their rulers, and from nowhere finding any terms 
appropriate to the frivolity of the nation, and the despotism 
and ambition of the government. Why do we find none such ? 
Are there no preserved letters manifesting that the republican 
philosopher maintained a clear perception and a condemna- 
tory judgment of such things, in spite of the Parisian adula- 
tion to himself, and the aid given to the rising republic by a 
tyrannic monarchy ? And as to that aid itself, it would be one 
of the most memorable examples of the weakness of strong 
minds, if Franklin could ever for a moment mistake, or 
estimate otherwise than with contempt, the motive that 
prompted it ; a motive which, in any case in which he had not 
been interested, would have placed the whole affair of this 
alliance and assistance in a quite different light from that in 
which he seemed so gratified to regard it. — A profligate and 
tyrannic court, a disinterested friend to a people asserting their 
freedom, and in the form of a republic ! And could the Amer- 
ican ambassador, though gratified, of course, by the fact of 
powerful assistance, affect to accept from that court, without a 
great struggle with his rising indignant scorn, the hypocritical 
cant and cajolery about co-operation against oppression, re- 
spect for the virtuous and interesting patriots of the new world, 
and the like, as expressive of its true principles in seizing so 
favourable an occasion for giving effect to its hatred against 
England ? And could he, into the bargain, contemplate an 
enslaved and debased people, pass in the front of the Bastile, 
and behold the ruinous extravagance and monstrous depravity 
of that court, with feelings which required nothing to keep 
them in the indulgent tone, but the recollection of French 
troops and French money employed in America ? 

If the editor had in his possession any letters or other manu- 
scripts tending to prove that no such beguilement took effect 



235 

upon a judgment on which so many other kinds of persons and 
things attempted in vain to impose, it was due to Franklin's 
reputation for independence of judgment, to have given them, 
even though they should have brought some impeachment upon 
his sincerity in the grateful and laudatory expressions repeat- 
edly here employed respecting France, and its interference in 
the contest. 

In a general moral estimate of his qualities, insincerity 
would seem to find very little place. His principles appear to 
have borne a striking correspondence, in simplicity, direct- 
ness, and decision, to the character of his understanding. 
Credit may be given him for having, through life, very rarely 
prosecuted any purpose which he did not deliberately approve ; 
and his manner of prosecution was distinguished, as far as 
appears, by a plain honesty in the choice of means, by a con- 
tempt of artifice and petty devices, by a calm inflexibility, and 
by a greater confidence of success than is usually combined 
with so clear and extended a foresight of the difficulties ; — 
but indeed that foresight of the difficulties might justify his 
confidence of the adaptation of his measures for encountering 
them. 

He appears to have possessed an almost invincible self- 
command, which bore hmi through all the negotiations, strifes 
with ignorance, obstinacy, duplicity, and opposing interest, and 
through tiresome delays and untoward incidents, with a sus- 
tained firmness, which preserved to him in all cases the most 
advantageous exercise of his faculties, and with a prudence of 
deportment beyond the attainment of the most disciplined 
adepts in mere political intrigue and court-practice. He was 
capable, indeed, of feeling an intense indignation, which comes 
out in fiill expression in some of the letters, relating to the 
character of the English government, as displayed in its policy 
toward America. This bitter detestation is the most unre- 
servedly disclosed in some of his confidential correspondence 
with David Hartley, an English member of parliament, a per- 
sonal friend of Franklin, a constant advocate, to a measured 
extent, of the Americans, and a sort of self-offered, clandes- 
tine, but tacitly-recognized medium for a kind of understand- 
ing, at some critical periods, between the English government 
and Dr. Franklin, without costing the ministers the conde- 
scension of official intercourse and inquiry. These vitupera- 
tive passages have a corrosive energy, by virtue of force of 



236 

mind and of justice, which perfectly precludes all appearance 
of littleness and mere temper in the indignation. It is the 
dignified character of Cato or Aristides. And if a manifes- 
tation of it in similar terms ever took place in personal con- 
ference with such men as were its objects, it must have ap- 
peared any thing rather than an ungoverned irritability ; nor 
would it have been possible to despise the indignant tone in 
wliich contempt was mingled with anger, as far as the two 
sentiments are compatible. Believing that the men who pro- 
voked these caustic sentences did for the most part deserve 
them, we confess we have read them with that sort of pleasure 
which is felt in seeing justice made to strike, by vindictive 
power of mind, on the characters of men whose stations de- 
fended their persons and fortunes from the most direct modes 
of retribution. 

When, at length, all was accomplished that, with long and 
earnest expostulation, he had predicted, and been ridiculed for 
predicting, to the English statesmen, as the certain conse- 
quence of persisting in their infatuated course, we find na 
rancorous recollection, no language of extravagant triumph at 
the splendid result, nor of excessive self-complacency in the 
retrospect of his own important share in conducting the great 
undertaking to such a consummation. His feelings do not 
seem to have been elated above the pitch of a calm satisfac- 
tion at having materially contributed to the success of a right- 
eous cause, a success in which he was convinced he saw not 
simply the vindication of American rights, but the prospect of 
milimited benefit to mankind. 

And here it may be remarked, that his predominant passion 
appears to have been a love of the useful. The useful was to 
him the summum hoimm., the supreme fair, the sublime and 
beautiful, which it may not perhaps be extravagant to believe 
he was in quest of every week for half a centuiy, in whatever 
place, or study, or practical undertaking. No department was 
too plain or humble for him to occupy himself in for this pur- 
pose ; and in affairs of the most ambitious order this was still 
systematically his object. Whether in directing the construct- 
ing of chimneys or of constitutions, lecturing on the saving of 
candles or on the economy of national revenues, he was still 
intent on the same end, the question always being how to ob- 
tain the most of solid tangible advantage by the plainest and 
easiest means. There has rarely been a mortal, of high in- 



fsanklin's correspondence. 287 

telligence and flattering fame, on whom the pomps of life were 
so powerless. On him w^ere completely thrown a\vay the 
oratorical and poetical heroics about glory, of Avhich heroics 
it was enough that he easily perceived the intention or efiect 
to be, to explode all sober truth and substantial good, and to 
impel men, at the very best of the matter, through some career 
of vanity, but commonly through mischief, slaughter, and de^ 
vastation, in mad pursuit of what amounts at last, if attained, 
to some certain quantity of noise, and empty show, and intox- 
icated transient elation. He was so far an admirable spirit 
for acting the Mentor to a young republic. It will not be his 
fault if the citizens of America shall ever become so servile 
to European example, as to think a multitude of supernumer- 
ary places, enormous salaries, and a factitious economy of 
society, a necessary security or decoration of that political lib- 
erty which they enjoy in pre-eminence aboA^e every nation on 
earth. In these letters of their patriarch and philosopher, 
they will be amply warned, by repeated and emphatical repre- 
sentations, of the desperate mischief of a political system in 
which the public resources shall be expended in a way to give 
the government both the interest and the means to corrupt the 
people. Of such representations the following passages will 
afford a tolerably fair specimen. 

" Her" (England's) " great disease at present is the number and enor- 
mous salaries and emoluments of office. Avarice and ambition are strong 
passions, and separately act with great force on the human mind ; but 
when both are united and may be gratified in the same object, their vio- 
lence is almost irresistible, and they hurry men headlong into factions and 
contentions destructive of all good government. As long therefore as 
these great emoluments subsist, your parliament will be a stormy sea, and 
your public counsels confounded b}^ private interests." 

" When I think of your present crazy constitution and its diseases, I 
imagine the enormous emoluments of place to be among the greatest." " As 
it seems to be a settled point at present that the minister must govern the 
parliament, who are to do every thing he would have done, and he is to 
bribe them to do this, and the people are to furnish the money to pay these 
bribes, the parliament appears to me a very expensive machine for govern- 
ment, and I apprehend the people will find out in time that they may as 
well be governed, and that it will be much cheaper to be governed, by the 
minister alone." 

" As long as the immense profits of these offices subsist, members of the 
shortest and most equally chosen parliaments will have them in view, and 
contend for them, and their contests will have all the same ruinous conse- 
quences. To me there appears to be but one effectual remedy, and that 
not likely to be adopted by so corrupt a nation ; which is to abolish these 
profits, and make every place of honour a place of burden. By that means 
11* 



238 franklin's correspondence. 

the effect of one of the passions above mentioned would be taken away, 
and something would be added to counteract the other." 

" The parhament have of late been acting an egregious farce, calling 
before them the mayor and aldermen of Oxford, for proposing a sum to be 
paid by their old members on being re-chosen at the next election ; and 
sundry printers and brokers for advertising and deaUng in boroughs, &c. 
The Oxford people were sent to Newgate, and discharged after some days, 
on humble petition, and receiving the Speaker's reprimand upon their 
knees. The house could scarcely keep countenance, knowing as they all 
do, that the practice is general. People say they mean nothing moro 
than to beat down the price by a little discouragement of borough jobbing, 
now that their own elections are all coming on. The price indeed is grown 
exorbitant, no less than 4000Z. for a member. Mr. Beckford has brought 
in a bill for preventing bribery and corruption in elections, wherein was a 
clause to oblige every member to sv»^ear, on admission into the house, that 
he had not directly or indirectly given any bribe to any elector, &c but 
this was so universally exclaimed against as answering no end but perjur- 
ing the members, that he has been obliged to withdraw that clause. It 
was indeed a cruel contrivance of his, worse than the gunpowder-plot, Mr. 
Thurlow opposed his bill by a long speech. Beckford in reply gave a dry 
hit to the house, that is repeated every where : ' The honourable gentle- 
man, in his learned discourse, gave us first one definition of corruption, 
and then another definition of corruption, and I think he was about to give 
us a third. Pray does that gentleman imagine there is any member of this 
house that does not know what corruption is ?' which occasioned only a 
roar of laughter, for they are so hardened in their practice that they are 
very little ashamed of it." 

" The parliament is up and the nation in a ferment with the new elec- 
tions. Great complaints are made that the natural interests of country 
gentlemen in their neighbouring boroughs, is overborne by the moneyed in- 
terests of the new people who have got sudden fortunes in the Indies, or as 
contractors, &c. £4000 is now the market price for a borough. In short, 
this whole venal nation is now at market, will be sold for about Two Mil- 
lions, and might be bought out of the hands of the present bidders (if he 
would offer half a million more) by the very devirhimself." 

It would, however, have been but fair to have acknowledg- 
ed how inconsiderable a portion of the nation they are whose 
venality it is that, on these occasions, has the effect of selling 
the whole people ; and that, the case being so, the fact of the 
nation's being sold does not prove its general venality. How 
perverse is its fortune ! that in such a state of its representa- 
tion it might be sold, though a vast majority of its people were 
of the sternest integrity ; whereas, in an enlarged and more 
equalized state of its representation, with a more frequent re- 
turn of elections, it could not be sold, though every living thing in 
the land were venal, for the plain reason that the buyers could 
not come into such a market. They could not afford to pur- 
chase such a number of articles miscalled consciences, even 



franklin's correspondence. 239 

at the low rate apiece which is the utmost worth of most of 
them, upon any calculation of three years' chances of indem- 
nification, by obtaining some moderately-remunerated office, 
with the additional chances as to the duration of their occupan- 
cy. And by the way, is not this obvious view of the matter, 
more than an answer to all that sophistry and corruption can 
say for things as they are ? Can there be any more decided 
test of a bad or a good construction of political institutions, 
than that they appear framed expressly to promote corruption 
and venality, and to avail themselves of them, like our pre- 
sent system of representation ; or that they disappoint and dis- 
courage corruption, by being of a constitution the least capa- 
ble that human wisdom can contrive, of finding their advantage 
in that corruption ? 

The political portion (the larger portion) of this correspond- 
ence, will be a valuable addition to the mass of lessons and 
documents which might have been supposed long since suffi- 
cient to disenchant all thinking men of their awful reverence 
for state -mystery, and cabinet-wisdom and ministerial integri- 
ty, and senatorial independence. We would hope, in spite of 
all appearances, that the times may not be very far oflT, when 
the infatuation of accepting the will of the persons that happen 
to be in power, as the evidence of wisdom and right, will no 
longer bereave nations of their sense, and their peace, and the 
fi-uits of their industry and improvements, — no longer render 
worse than useless, for the public interests, — the very con- 
sciences of men whose conduct relative to their individual con- 
cerns bears a fair appearance of sound principle and under- 
standing. We will hope for a time when no secret history of 
important events will display the odious spectacle of a great 
nation's energies and resources, and the quiet of the world, 
surrendered without reserve, to the mercy, and that mercy 
" cruel," of such men as Franklin had to warn in vain of the 
consequences of their policy respecting America. 

The correspondence gives an exhibition of almost every 
thing that ought to enforce on a nation the duty of exercising 
a constitutional jealousy of the executive. English readers 
may here see how worthily were confided the public interest 
of tlieir forefathers, involving to an incalculable extent of their 
own. They may see how, while those forefathers looked on, 
many of them for a great while too infatuated with what they 
called loyalty to dare even a thought of disapprobation, those 



240 franklin's correspondence. 

interests were sported with and sacrificed by men who cared 
not what they sacrificed, so long as their own pride, and resent- 
ment, and emolument, could stand exempted. They may see 
how fatally too late those forefathers were in discovering that 
their public managers had begun their career in the madness 
of presumption ; and that warning, and time, and disastrous 
experiments, and national suiiering, had done nothing towards 
curing it. They will see how, while a show of dignity, and 
a talk of justice, national honour, and so forth, were kept up 
before the people, there were no expedients and tricks too 
mean, no corruptions too gross, no cabals and compromises of 
disagreeing selfishness too degrading, to have their share in 
the state-machinery which was working behind this state-ex- 
hibition. What is the instruction resulting from all this, but 
the very reverse of what we have so often heard inculcated on 
the one hand by interested and corrupt advocates, and on the 
other by good men of the quietist school ? What should it be 
but that nations ought to maintain a systematic habitual jea- 
lousy and examination relative to the principles and schemes 
of their rulers ; that especially all movements towards a icar 
should excite a ten-fold vigilance of this distrust, it being al- 
ways a strong probability that the measure is wrong, but a 
perfect certainty that an infinity of delusions will be poured 
out on the people to persuade them that it is right. 

But to return to an honest politician. Great admiration is 
due to the firm, explicit, and manly tone, with which he meets 
the inquiries, the insidious propositions, or the hinted menaces, 
of the hostile government and its agents ; to the patience with 
which he encounters the same overtures, and attempted impo- 
sitions, in a succession of varied forms ; to the coolness and 
clearness with which he sometimes discusses, and the digni- 
fied contempt with which he sometimes spurns. Very many 
of the political letters afford examples ; we are particularly 
struck with one, (p. 250, 4to.) addressed from Paris to a -per- 
son who had written to him from Brussels, without a genuine 
name, and with other circumstances of mystery, suggesting 
also a mysterious mode, which the Doctor did not adopt, of 
transmitting a reply. The letter Avas designed to obtain 
Franklin's opinion of certain unofficially proposed terms of ac- 
commodation, and his answer shoAvs that he believed the wri- 
ter to be a person of more importance than the ordinary sort 
of agents that now and then made their attempts upon him. 



FRANKLIN S CORRESPONDENCE. 241 

It is far too long for us to insert a fourth part of it ; but it is an 
example of vigorous thought, compressed composition, and 
high-toned feeling. We are tempted to quote some passages. 
It begins thus : 

" Sir, 

" I received your letter dated at Brussels the 16th past. [The 16th of 
June, 1778 ] My vanity might possibly be flattered by your expressions 
of compliment to my understanding, if your proposals did not more clearly 
manifest a mean opinion of it," 

" You conjure me in the name of the omniscient and just God before 
whom I must appear, and by my hopes of future fame, to consider if some 
expedient cannot be found to put a stop to the desolation of America, and 
prevent the miseries of a general war. As I am conscious of having taken 
every step in my power to prevent the breach, and no one to widen it, I 
can appear cheerfully before that God, fearing nothing from his justice in 
this particular, though I have much occasion for his mercy in many oth- 
ers. As to my future fame, I am content to rest it on my past and present 
conduct, without seeking an addition to it in the crooked, dark paths you 
propose to me, where I should most certainly lose it. This your solemn 
address would therefore have been more properly made lo your sovereign 
and his venal parliament. He and they who wickedly began and madly 
continue a war for the desolation of Ajnerica, are alone accountable for 
the consequences. ..." 

" You think we flatter ourselves and are deceived into an opinion that 
England must acknowledge our independency. We on the other hand 
think you flatter yourselves in imagining such an acknowledgment a vast 
boon which we strongly desire, and which you may gain some great ad- 
vantage by granting or withholding. We have never asked it of you. We 
only tell you that you can have no treaty with us but as an independent 
State ; and you may please yourselves and your children with the rattle of 
your right to govern us, as long as you have done with that of your King's 
being King of France, without giving us the least concern if you do not 
attempt to exercise it. That this pretended right is indisputable, as you 
say, we utterly deny. Your parliament never had a right to govern us, 
and your King has lorfeited it. But I thank you for letting me know a 
little of your mind, that even if the parliament should acknowledge our 
independency, the act would not be binding to posterity, and that your na- 
tion would resume and prosecute the claim as soon as they found it con- 
venient. We suspected before that you would not be actually bound by 
your conciliatory acts longer than till they had served their purpose of in- 
ducing us to disband our forces; but we were not certain that you were 
knaves by principle, and that we ought not to have the least confidence 
in your offers, promises, or treaties, though confirmed by parliament. . . ." 

In the concluding sentences, (injured in one instance by a 
bad pun,) he takes the whole advantage of being a republican 
and an American. 

*' This proposition of delivering ourselves bound and gagged, ready for 



242 franklin's correspondence. 

hanging without even a right to complain, and without a friend to be found 
afterwards among all mankind, you would have U3 embrace upon the faith 
of an act of parliament ! An act of your parliament ! This demonstrates 
that you do not yet know us, and that you fancy we do not know you. 
But it is not merely this flimsy faith that we are to act upon ; you offer us 
hope, the hope of places, pensions, and peerage. Tiiese, judging from 
yourselves, you think are motives irresistible. This offer to corrupt us, 
sir, is with me your credential, and convinces me that you are not a pri- 
vate volunteer in your application. It bears the stamp of British Court in- 
trigue, and the signature of your King. But think for a moment in what 
light it must b3 viewed in America. Places, which cannot come among 
us, for you take care by a special article to keep them to yourselves. We 
must then pay the salaries in order to enrich ourselves with these places. 
But you will give us pensions ; probably to be paid too out of your expected 
American revenue ; and which none of us can accept without deserving 
and perhaps obtaining a suspension. Peerages ! alas ! sir, our long ob- 
servation of the vast servile majority of your peers, voting constantly for 
every measure proposed by a minister, however weak or wicked, leaves us 
small respect for them, and we consider it as a sort of tar-and -feather honour, 
or a mixture of foulness and folly, which every man among us who should 
accept from your King, would be obliged to renounce or exchange for that 
conferred by the mobs of their own country, or wear it with everlasting 
shame. I am, sir, your humble servant." 

His perfect superiority to all envy of this sort of honours, 
under any circumstances, is shown, not by laborious depre- 
ciation, but by the transient casual expressions of slight which 
give the more genuine indications of contempt^ — of that easy 
and true contempt which it costs a man no trouble to maintain. 
The only instance in which we recollect his taking pains 
about the matter, is in reference to that little whim of the 
transatlantic republicans, the order of the Cincinnati, which 
some of them wished to make an hereditary distinction, in 
humble imitation of the European institution of nobility. He 
felt it due to the character of their revolution and their republi- 
can polity, to set himself in earnest to explode, by ridicule and 
argument, this piece of folly. If for the honour of their own 
persons the aspirants liked such a bauble, even let them have 
it, he said, at whatever it was worth ; but he had no mercy on 
the absurdity of pretending to transmit down honorary dis- 
tinctions to persons who by the nature of the case cannot 
have earned them. 

It has been hinted already that, as a matter of general read- 
ing, the political portion of these letters will perhaps be 
thought too large. But it may be presumed that documents 
illustrating the American Revolution, may excite more in- 
terest now than they would have done between twenty and 



franklin's correspondence. 243 

thirty years since. About that time the old world appeared 
to be on the eve of such a revolution in favour of liberty, as 
would have rendered, at least for a time, that of the Ameri- 
can colonies a comparatively inconsiderable event. The 
military process through which it had been accomplished, 
was already begun to be spoken of as "the little war;" and 
the republican confederation of a number of scantily in- 
habited farming districts, was ceasing to be an imposing 
spectacle, when European monarchies, of immense popula- 
tion, and ancient fame for literature, arts, arms, and royal and 
aristocratic magnificence, were seen melting and moulding, 
amid volcanic fires, into new forms, bearing a transient, in- 
deed, and dubious, but at first hopeful semblance of beauty 
and vigour. The long and tremendous tumult of all the moral 
elements, involving such a cost of every human interest, as 
could be repaid by no less a result, than a mighty change for 
the better of the whole political and social condition of 
Europe, has subsided in the consolidation of the very system 
by which its commencement was provoked, with the addition 
of an infinite account of depravity and poverty. But America, 
all this while, has been exulting in the consequences of her 
revolution, and still triumphs in freedom undiminished, in an 
administration of government of which it is not the grand 
business to squander or devour her resources, and in a pros- 
perity and power continually enlarging, with unlimited capa- 
bilities and prospects. Here then is the revolution that has 
succeeded, while all things else have failed : it eclipses, now, 
the importance of all the events by which its own importance 
appeared about to be eclipsed ; and the interest which it 
claims to excite, will be progressive with its magnificent con- 
sequences. The proprietor, therefore, of these papers, has 
been wise or fortunate in reserving them to become old in his 
possession. 

The most entertaining, however, and by no means an un- 
instructive division, of the letters, will be the first part, called 
" miscellaneous," and consisting chiefly of letters of friend- 
ship, abounding in tokens of benevolence, sparkling not un- 
frequently into satiric pleasantry, but of a bland good-natured 
kind, arising in the most easy natural manner, and thrown off 
with admirable simplicity and brevity of expression. There 
are short discussions relating to various arts and conveniences 
of life, plain instructions for persons deficient in cultivation, 



244 franklin's correspondence. 

and the means for it ; condolences on the death of friends, and 
frequent references, in an advanced stage of the correspond- 
ence, to his old age, and approaching death. Moral princi- 
ples and questions are sometimes considered and simpliHed ; 
and American affairs are often brought in view, though not 
set forth in the diplomatic style. 

It is unnecessary to remark, that Franklin was not so much 
a man of books as of affairs ; but he was not the less for that 
a speculative man. Every concern became an intellectual 
subject to a mind so acutely and perpetually attentive to the 
relation of cause and effect. For enlargement of his sphere 
of speculation, his deficiency of literature, in the usual sense 
of the term, was excellently compensated by so wide an ac- 
quaintance with the world, and with distinguished individuals 
of all ranks, professions, and attainments. 

It may be, however, that a more bookish and contemplative 
employment of some portion of his life, would have left one 
deiiciency of his mental character less palpable. There ap- 
pears to have been but little in that character of the element 
of sublimity. We do not meet with many bright elevations of 
thought, or powerful enchanting impulses of sentiment, or 
brilliant transient glimpses of ideal worlds. Strong, inde- 
pendent, comprehensive, never-remitting intelligence, pro- 
ceeding on the plain ground of things, and acting in a manner 
always equal to, and never appearing at moments to surpass 
itself, constituted his mental power. In its operation it has 
no risings and fallings, no disturbance into eloquence or 
poetry, no cloudiness of smoke indeed, but no darting of 
flames. A consequence of this perfect uniformity is, that all 
subjects treated, appaar to be on a level, the loftiest and most 
insignificant being commented on in the same unalterable 
strain of a calm plain sense, which brings all things to its 
own standard, insomuch that a great subject shall sometimes 
seem to become less while it is elucidated, and less com- 
manding while it is enforced. In discoursing of serious sub- 
jects, Franklin imposes gravity on the reader, but does not 
excite solemnity, and on grand ones he never displays or in- 
spires enthusiasm. 

It is, however, curious to see such a man just now and then 
a little touched with romance : as, for instance, in the follow- 
ing letter to Dr. Priestley : — 



franklin's correspondence. 245 

" I always rejoice to hear of your being still employed in experimental 
researches into nature, and of the success you meet with. The rapid pro- 
gress true science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I 
was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may 
be carried in a thousand years, the power of man over matter ; we may 
perhaps learn to deprive large masses of the gravity, and give them ab- 
solute levity for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its 
labour and double its produce : all diseases may by sure means be pre. 
vented or cured, (not excepting even that of old age) and our lives 
lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian standard. <3 that 
moral science were in as fair a way of improvement, that men would cease 
to be wolves to one another, and that human beings would at length learn 
what they now improperly call humanity !" 

In a very friendly letter to Dr. Mather, of Boston, he men- 
tions a very simple cause as having, in early life, contributed 
to determine him to that course of practical utility which he 
pursued to the last. 

•' I received your kind letter with your excellent advice to the people of 
the United States. Such writings, though they may be lightly passed 
over by many readers, yet if ihey make a deep impression in one active 
mind of a hundred, the effects mav be considerable. Permit me to men- 
tion one little instance which, though it relates to myself, will not be quite 
imintercsting to you. When I was a boy, I met with a book entitled 
Essays 1o do Good, which I think was written by your father. It had 
been so little regarded by a former possessor, that several leaves of it were 
torn out ; but the remainder gave me such a turn of thinking as to have 
an influence on my conduct through life : for I have always set a greater 
value on the character of a doer of good, than on any other kind of repu- 
tation ; and if I have been, as you seem to think, a useful citizen, the 
public owes the advantage of it to that book. You mention your being 
in your seventy-eighth year : I am in my seventy-ninth year ; we are 
grown old together. It is now more than sixty years since I left Boston; 
but I remember well both your father and grandfather, having heard them 
both in the pulpit, and seen them in their houses. The last time 1 saw 
your father was in the beginning of 1724. He received me into his library, 
and on my taking leave, showed me a shorter way out of the house through 
a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam over head. We were 
still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning 
partly townrds him, when he said hastily, " Stoop, stoop." I did not 
understand him till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man 
that never missed any occasion of giving instruction ; and upon this he 
said to me, you are young, and have the vjorld before you ; stoop as you 
go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps. The advice thus 
beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me, and I often think of 
it, when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people by 
their carrying their heads too high." 

But the most remarkable letter in the volume, is one writ- 
ten in his eighty.fifth year, to Dr. Ezra Stiles, President of 



246 franklin's correspondence. 

Yale College, who had in a very friendly and respectful man- 
ner solicited some information respecting the aged philoso- 
pher's opinion of the Christian religion. Franklin's reply to 
an inquiry which he says had never been made to him before, 
is written with kindness and seriousness, but nevertheless in 
terms not a little evasive. But perhaps it would in effect have 
as much explicitness as his venerable correspondent could 
wish, for it would too clearly inform the good man, as it does 
its present readers, that this philosopher, and patriot, and, as 
in many points of view he may most justly be regarded, philan- 
thropist, was content and prepared to venture into another world 
without any hold upon the Christian faith. In many former 
letters, as well as in this last, he constantly professes his firm 
belief in an Almighty Being, wise, and good, and exercising a 
providential government over the world ; and in a future state 
of conscious existence, rendered probable by the nature of 
the human soul, and by the analogies presented in the reno- 
vations and reproductions in other classes of being, and 
rendered necessary by the unsatisfactory state of allotment and 
retribution on earth. On the ground of such a faith, so sus- 
tained, he appears always to anticipate with complacency the 
appointed removal to another scene, confident that he should 
continue to experience in another life the goodness of that 
Being who had been so favourable to him in this, " though 
without the smallest conceit," he says, " of meriting such 
goodness." The merely philosophic language uniformly em- 
ployed in his repeated anticipations of an immortal life, taken 
together with two or three profane passages in these letters, 
(there are but few such passages*,) and with the manner in 
which he equivocates on the question respectfully pressed upon 
him by the worthy President of Yale College, respecting his 
opinion of Christ, leave no room to doubt that, whatever he 
did really think of the Divine Teacher, he substantially re- 
jected Christianity — that he refused to acknowledge it in any 
thing like the character of a peculiar economy for the illu- 
mination and redemption of a fallen and guilty race. Nothing, 
probably, that he believed, was believed on the authority of its 
declarations, and nothing that he assumed to hope after death, 

* One of the most prominent and offensive is in a very short letter 
(p. 115, 4to.) written when past eighty, on the occasion of the death of a 
person whom he calls " our poor friend Ben Kent." We were going to 
transcribe, — but it is better to leave such vile stuff where it is. 



247 

was expected on the ground of its redeeming efficacy and its 
promises. And this state of opinions it appears that he self- 
complacently maintained without variation, during the long 
course of his activities and speculations on the great scale ; 
for in this letter to Dr. Stiles, of the date of 1790, he enclosed, 
as expressive of his latest opinions, one written nearly 
forty years before, in answer to some religious admoni- 
tions addressed to him by George Whitfield. So that, 
throughout a period much surpassing the average duration of 
the life of man, spent in a vigorous and very diversified ex- 
ercise of an eminently acute and independent intellect, with 
all the lights of the world around him, he failed to attain the 
one grand simple apprehension how man is to be accepted 
with God. There is even cause to doubt whether he ever 
made the inquiry, with any real solicitude to meet impartially 
the claims of that religion which avows itself to be, on evi- 
dence, a declaration of the mind of the Almighty on the mo- 
mentous subject. On any question of physics, or mechanics, 
or policy, or temporal utility of any kind, or morals as de- 
tached from religion, he could bend the whole force of his 
spirit, and the result was often a gratifying proof of "the great- 
ness of that force ; but the religion of Christ it would appear 
that he could pass by with an easy assumption that whatever 
might be the truth concerning it, he could perfectly well do 
without it. To us this appears a mournful and awful specta- 
cle ; and the more so, from that entire unaffected tranquillity 
with which he regarded the whole concern in the conscious 
near approach of death. Some of the great Christian topics 
it was needless to busy himself about then, because he should 
soon learn the "truth with less trouble !" — We conclude by 
transcribing from the letter to Dr. Stiles the paragraph relating 
to the philosopher's religion. 

" Here is rny creed : I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. 
Tliat he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. 
That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his 
other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated 
with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take 
to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as 
you do, in whatever sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, 
my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals 
and his religion as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is 
like to see, but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, 
and I have with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as 
to his divinity ; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having 



248 

never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when 
I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I 
see no harm, however, in its bcinor believed, if that belief has the good 
consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected 
and more observed, especially as I do not see that the Supreme takes it 
amiss by distinguishing the believers, in his government of the world, with 
any peculiar marks of his displeasure. I shail only add respecting my- 
self, that having experienced the goodness of that Being in conducting me 
prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt of its continuance in the 
next, though without the smallest conceit of meriting such goodness." 



DR. BEATTIE. 249 

X. 

JAMES BEATTIE. 



An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, 
LL.D., late Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic in 
the Marisclial College and University of Aberdeen ; includ- 
ing many of his Original Letters, By Sir William 
Forbes, of Pitsligo, Bart. 

When a man of humble condition and education who has 
cultivated literature under the pressure of many disadvantages, 
and perhaps distresses, comes before the public with a work 
which has cost him great labour, costs the purchaser but a 
moderate price, and communicates very necessary, or at least 
very useful and seasonable information, he may justly claim 
for the faults of his book the very last degree of forbearance 
which criticism can exercise, without surrendering its essen- 
tial laws. But when a man of fortune, who had a liberal 
education, who has been intimate^with many of the most dis- 
tinguished individuals, both in literature and rank, for forty 
years, who would indignantly disown any wish to raise money 
on the grave of his friend, who knows that an ample memoir 
of that friend has already been given to the public, and who 
adopts the easiest of all possible modes of making up volumes, 
publishes a splendid work, he will naturally disdain to be un- 
der any obligation to the clemency of critics. We shall 
therefore feel perfectly at liberty to express our honest opinion 
on these volumes ; and laying out of the question all the ex- 
cellencies which the author doubtless possesses, we shall 
consider him simply in the character which he has assumed 
in appearing before the public. 

We cannot but earnestly wish that the present epidemical 
disease in literature, the custom of making very large books 
about individuals, may in due time find, like other diseases, 
some limit to its prevalence, and at length decline and dis- 
appear. What is to become of readers, if the exit of every 



250 FORBEs's LIFE OF 

man of some literary eminence is thus to be followed by a 
long array of publications, beginning with duodecimos, ex- 
tending into octavos, and expanded at last into a battalion of 
magniticent quartos ? This is reviving to some purpose the 
The ban method of attacking in the form of a wedge ; and 
we do hope the curiosity, diligence, and patience of readers 
will at last be completely put to the rout. 

This swelling fungous kind of biography confounds all the 
right proportions in which the claims and the importance of 
individuals should be arranged, and exhibited to the attention 
of the public. When a private person, whose life was 
marked by few striking varieties, is thus brought forward in 
two volumes quarto, while many an individual of modern 
times, who influenced the fate of nations, has been confined 
to a sixth part of the compass, it reminds us too much of that 
political rule by which Old Sarum, consisting of one house, 
is represented by two illustrious senators, while many very 
populous towns are not represented at all. If a professor of 
a college is to lie thus magnificently in state, what must be 
done for such a man as Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox ? And still more, 
what must be done after the exit of some persons who are at 
present acting their part in human affairs ? The French En- 
cyclopedic will be, in point of bulk, but a horn-book in com- 
paiis>n of the stupendous host of folios, which must come 
forth after the departure of Bonaparte and Talleyrand ; pro- 
vided, that is to say, that sufficient materials, in the way of 
paper, ink, &;c., can then be obtained wherewithal to furnish 
out this mighty blazon of monumental history. And by the 
way, the makers of paper will do well to take the hint from 
us, and have their warehouses ready for the event which will 
happen sooner or later in their favour, though to the con- 
fusion and dismay of the most courageous and indefatigable 
readers. As to reviewers, the most industrious and incor- 
ruptible of all the servants of the public, they will then have 
the plea of absolute necessity for resorting to the practice of 
which they have sometimes been most unrighteously accused, 
that of reviewing books without inspecting them. 

The method of constructing large biographical works out 
of an assemblage of letters, with here and there a page and 
paragraph between, for the purpose of connexion and ex- 
planation, has plenty of plausible recommendations. There 
is an appearance of great modesty ; the compiler makes no 



DR. BEATTIE. 251 

claims to the honours of authorship ; all he is anxious for, is 
to display in the simplest manner, the merits, talents, and pur- 
suits of his friend. That friend is thus made to present him- 
self to us in his own person, and his familiar correspondence 
will disclose to us the internal qualities of the man incom- 
parably better, as it is so often repeated to us, than any formal 
development of a biographer. The series of such letters, 
continued through half the length of life or more, will 
show the gradual progress and improvement of the mind. 
If some of them are trivial or common, in subject or style, 
even the smallest things said and written by eminent persons 
have their value ; it is pleasing to observe how great minds 
sometimes unbend ; and consoling to see in how many re- 
spects they are like ourselves. These are recommendations 
proper to be mentioned to the public ; but there are others of 
which the biographer can silently take the advantage to him- 
self, besides that extreme facility of performance which we 
have hinted already. One of these is impunity. There is 
little to be attacked in such a book, except what its author has 
not written ; or if he is directly censured for introducing some 
of the things written by the person who is the subject of the 
book, the partiality of friendship is a plea always at hand, 
and a feeling always accounted amiable. Another is a fair 
opportunity for the biographer to introduce himself very often, 
and without the direct form of egotism ; since the probability 
is, that not a few of the letters were written to him, and con- 
tain of course, many very handsome things. His modesty 
professes to hesitate about their insertion ; but yet they must 
be inserted, because they show in so striking a light, the kind 
disposition of his friend. 

Such handsome things, we have no doubt, were amply de- 
served by Sir W. Forbes, and even those more than hand- 
some things which he inforn^s us he has omitted in printing 
the letters. The indications of a sincere aftection for Dr. 
Beattie, are very conspicuous ; and we attribute it to a real 
partiality of friendship, that he has made this work much 
larger than we think can be of service to the instruction of 
the public, or the memory of his friend. The memory of 
that friend was unquestionably too dear to him to have per- 
mitted the insertion of one letter or line, which he did not 
sincerely believe would give the same impression of the writer, 
which Sir William himself was happy to cherish. It is there- 



252 FORBES'S LIFE OF 

fore unfortunate, that the reader should feel, at the close of 
the book, that he would have been more pleased with both 
Dr. Beattie and his biogropher, if it had come to a close 
much sooner. 

The parts written by Sir W. Forbes, are in a style, per- 
spicuous, correct, and classical ; generally relating however 
to particulars, which required no great effort of thought. 
Many of these particulars are most unnecessarily introduced, 
and lead into details which are extremely tiresome, not ex- 
cepting even the analysis of Dr. Beattie's writings. It had 
surely been enough to have stated in a few sentences, the 
objects of his several performances, and then, if the reader 
deemed those objects of importance, he would take an oppor- 
tunity of consulting the books themselves. The notes con- 
tain a large assemblage of biographical and genealogical 
records. When a new acquaintance of Dr. Beattie is men- 
tioned, it is deemed proper for us to be informed of his pa- 
rentage, his connexions, his residence, his othces, his accom- 
plishments. In several instances a letter of little interest is 
preceded by a long history of still less, for the purpose of 
making that letter intelligible, by detailing some transaction 
to which it relates ; as in that part of the book referring to 
the union of two colleges in Aberdeen. Sir William is sufB- 
ciently a citizen of the world, we have no doubt, to wish his 
book may be read in each part of the kingdom ; why was he 
not enough a citizen of the world, to be aware how small a 
portion of the kingdom can feel any concern in this piece of 
history ? If he thought all these matters would magnify the 
importance of his principal subject, he is so far mistaken, that 
the reader is tempted to quarrel with that subject, on account 
of this crowd of appendages. The reader feels in this case, 
just as Sir William would do, if some one of his friends of 
high rank, whom he would be very glad to receive in an easy 
quiet way, would never come to visit him for a day or two, 
without bringing also a large troop of footmen, postillions, 
cooks, nursery-maids, and other inhabitants of his house, 
kitchen, and stables. We will not suppose it was his formal 
purpose to make a very large book. Nor could it be his am- 
bition to display writing talents, as the subjects would have 
been unfortunately selected for such a purpose ; and indeed 
we do not accuse him of ostentation as an author. Perhaps 
it is no great vice if he exhibits a little of it as a man. But 



DR. BEATTIE. 253 

we have felt a degree of surprise that he should not seem to 
be aware of the mipressioii which would be made on the 
minds of his readers, by his adding, at the end of almost 
every note relating to one or another distinguished personage 
of Dr. Beattie's acquaintance, "And I also had the honour of 
his friendship." This occurs so often, that we have felt that 
kind of irritation which is excited when a man, that we wish 
to respect, is for the tenth or twentieth time doing or repeat- 
ing a foolish thing in order to intimate his importance. We 
persuade ourselves that this feeling arises from our right per- 
ception of w hat would have preserved Sir William's dignity ; 
perhaps however we deceive ourselves, and the feeling springs 
from envy of his high fortune, for we doubt if we were ever 
summoned to wait on a man of such extensive and illustrious 
connexions before. 

Previously to the insertion of any of Dr. Beattie's letters, 
a succinct account is given of his life, from his birth, of 
humble, but very respectable parents, till his twenty-fifth year, 
when he was appointed professor of moral philosophy and 
logic, in Marischal college, after having passed through the 
offices of parish-clerk and schoolmaster in the neighbourhood 
of his native place, and assistant in a respectable school in 
Aberdeen. This rapid advancement, by means of merit 
alone, is in itself sufficient to evince both uncommon ability 
and industry. We are informed that the passion and the 
talent for poetry were very early awakened in his mind, and 
in one of his letters to a friend, in a later period of his life, 
he acknowledges that his "Minstrel" is substantially a de- 
scription of what had been his own mental character in his 
youth. A prematurity of faculties appears conspicuous 
through the whole course of his earlier life, and when he was 
fixed at Aberdeen, those faculties were extended to the ut- 
most, in the society of a number of distinguished men, such 
as Campbell, Reid, Gerard, Gregory, and many others, with 
whom he familiarly associated, and from that time maintained 
an intimate friendship as long as the respective parties lived. 
An entertaining account is given of these literary friends 
forming themselves into a society for philosophical discussion, 
to which the common people gave the denomination of the 
Wise Club, in which the first ideas were started of some of 
those theories which were afterwards unfolded at large, in 
books that have obtained a high rank in the philosophic 
12 



254 FoiiB|:s's life of 

school. It is pleasing to observe, that the friendship among: 
these scholars and philosophers was very cordial, and not 
withered bj that envy and jealousy which the philosophic 
character has often enough failed to preclude, when rival 
talents have created a comparison and balance of reputation. 
Dr. Beattie retained his station at Aberdeen all the rest of 
his life, which was diversified only by his family connexions 
and cares, his publications, his friendships, and his occa- 
sional visits to London. A piece of information is now and 
then interposed by the biographer ; but these circumstances 
are chiefly unfolded in Dr. Beattie's correspondence with Dr. 
Blacklock, Sir W. Forbes, Mr. Arbuthnot, Mrs. Montague, 
the Bishop of London, the Duchess of Gordon, and several 
other friends. 

From the time of Beattie's establishment at Aberdeen, till 
within a few years of the end of his life, a period of forty years, 
he prosecuted study and the business of authorship with inde- 
fatigable industry and ardour. And in passing along the 
series of letters, our admiration is repeatedly excited by the 
variety of attainments, the extent of accurate reading, and the 
quantity of composition, for which he was able to rescue time 
enough from his professional employments, wide correspond- 
ence, intercourse with society, and domestic sorrows. A more 
instructive example is not often displayed of what resolute 
application may accomplish, when supported by a very warm 
interest in the business in which it is exerted. But at the 
same time a warm passion for literature, especially when a 
man writes, as well as reads, is apt to produce a species of 
extravagance, which, to people who are not in the same em- 
ployment, appears excessively ludicrous. A cork-cutter, or a 
maker of nails, or pins, or pegs for shoes, who quietly betakes 
himself to his work every morning, and goes soberly through 
it as a matter of course, would be first surprised, and next 
diverted to laughter, to see the importance, and earnestness, 
and solemnity, put on by an author and a poet, while occupied 
about the making of a line, the adjusting of a syllable, the 
changing of an epithet, the measuring of dactyls, or the length- 
ening or shortening of a paragraph ; and by the self-com- 
placency, the air of high achievement, and the congratulations 
of scholars, Avhen he has performed this great duty well. Even 
the detail of the graver and more philosophic labours of writing 
cannot be listened to long, when the writers are to give the 



©E. BEATTIE. 255 

account of them, without the loss of gravity ; though it is true 
that the gravity which is lost in laughing, may be quickly 
resumed for censuring. 

The letters of authors, from Pope's time down to the pre- 
sent instance, betray them to this ridicule and this censure. 
There is no end of the amplifications and repetitions about my 
book, my poems, my ode, my epigram, my translations, my 
corrections, my new edition, my next production. — I have 
taken great pains to amend the harshness of the tenth or 
fifteenth line ; I have excluded one stanza, and inserted two ; 
I flatter myself that the objection which has been made to it 
by the public will now be obviated ; I have been particularly 
struck with a coincidence between a passage in my essay, and 

one in Mr. 's treatise ; I can prove that mine was not 

borrowed ; I have written twenty pages of a dissertation on 
the subject we were lately conversing upon ; you know I do 
not think highly of my own talents ; I am inclined to think 
this will be a decisive performance, however ; my last work 
is getting much into vogue, as I am informed. — I hear the 
critics are at work ; I defy them ; your approbation would 
sustain my self-complacency, if they were all to condemn me ; 

Mr. is very angry, but I think he will not attack ; the 

work has produced a great sensation ; I am told that Dr. E., 
and Bishop F., and Lord G. are delighted with it ; I have just 
received a letter from Lady H., who pays me such compli- 
ments as I will not repeat to you ; she tells me that Mr. J. is 
wonderfully pleased and is very anxious to see me, &;c. &c. 

If authors may be allowed to expatiate on these matters, 
and in this manner, in their communications with their inti- 
mate literary friends, the letters ought, for the sake of the 
respectability of the writers, to be confined to those friends 
alone. Should there be any exception, it would be in the 
instance where some important principle of criticism is dis- 
cussed in immediate connexion with any articles of the author's 
own performances, so that his remarks respecting his compo- 
sitions, shall become instructive lessons on the art of com- 
position in general. But this is rarely the case in those parts 
of the letters before us, which are occupied with a multitude 
of minutiae about the writer's own studies. We therefore 
think, that many of these letters convict Sir W. Forbes of 
utterly mistaking the proper method of recalling his departed 
friend, with dignity, into the public consideration. 



256 FORBEs's LIFE OP 

The first publication of Dr. Beattie was a volume of juvenile 
poems, in a new edition of which he omitted several pieces 
which his biographer regrets to lose ; especially a long Ode 
to Peace, which is inserted in the appendix to the present 
work. We think that Dr. Beattie showed more discernment 
in wishing to let it sink in oblivion, than Sir William in fishing 
it up again. The term Chaos occurs in the first stanza, and 
would have been a singularly appropriate title for the whole 
ode. It is not a description of chaos, but the very thing itself; 
a mass of ill-defined and enormous images ; a confusion of 
crude elements, dashing, rumbling, howling, and fighting all 
in the dark. 

The "Minstrel" is the production of a maturer age, and 
will always be read with delight, by persons endowed with a 
taste for nature, with tenderness of feeling, and elevated 
imagination. The alleged deficiency of incident would hardly 
appear to us a fault, in any work so rich in refined sentiment 
and beautiful description. 

An ample portion of the first volume is occupied with the 
project, the completion, the publication, and the success, of 
the "Essay on Truth." This is no place for the examination 
of the principles of that celebrated book, which, beyond all 
doubt, was written with the worthiest intention, and was of 
considerable use at the time, in exposing some of the most 
obvious extravagances of the sceptical philosophy, which was 
carried to the very limit of sense by Mr. Hume, and pushed 
beyond it into the most ridiculous folly, by some of his weak 
admirers and wicked followers. The book will be an accept- 
able resting-place to those who are averse to the labour of 
abstract thinking, and an asylum to those who are terrified by 
the consequences sometimes seen to result from attempting to 
prosecute such thinking beyond the power and reach of the 
human faculties. But we cannot expect that philosophers 
will ever be satisfied with this doctrine of common sense. 
They will, we think justly, assert that there is no boundary 
which can fairly limit and close the investigation of truth on 
this side the region of metaphysics. The ultimate principles 
must be there, whether they can be found there or not ; and 
thither the investigation will absolutely go, in spite of every 
contrivance to satisfy and determine it at any nearer point. 
How far it shall go into that world of abstraction, before its 
progress shall be stopped by humility or despair, will depend 



DR. BEATTIE. 257 

on the strength of a merely philosophic mind, and on the dis* 
cretion of a pious one. 

The author's expectations of the success of his essay were 
not sanguine, and therefore surprise heightened his satisfac- 
tion when it was received, if many of these letters do not 
exaggerate, with such delight, as if Christianity and true 
philosophy had been waiting, in the awful crisis of existence 
or extinction, for its appearance. It seems to have been wel- 
comed like a convoy of provisions in a famishing garrison, by 
many high characters in church and state, whose exultation 
would really seem to betray the impression which their talents 
had not prevented Mr. Hume from making on their fears. The 
most flattering attentions thickened on Dr. Beattie within the 
circle of his personal acquaintance ; and he received from Eng- 
land many letters abounding with expressions of admiration and 
offers of friendship, on the strength of which he was induced to 
make a visit to London. At this period of the history, he is pre- 
sented to us in a different point of view from that of the scholar, 
poet, and philosopher. We are fairly told, though with much 
care to qualify the homeliness of the confession, that it was 
needful to Dr. Beattie to eat, which we have often had occa- 
sion to be sorry that philosophers, including reviewers, should 
be under the necessity of doing. The means of subsistence 
for himself and family were confined to the small stipend of his 
professorship, and the emolument that might accrue from his 
publications ; of which he received a comfortable sample and 
assurance in the fifty guineas paid him for his "Essay on 
Truth," which had only cost him the labour of four years. 
His many generous and opulent friends in Scotland and Eng- 
land were aware of his circumstances, and sincerely regretted 
them. A comparatively small annual sum would have given 
a man of his moderate wants and habits, the feeling of inde- 
pendence ; and a strong and concurrent sentiment of anxiety 
was awakened, in the minds of a greater number of noblemen 
and gentlemen than we can charge our memories with, to find 
out any means of obtaining for him this advantage. They 
lamented the duty, imposed on them by their high rank, of 
expending so many thousands on their splendid establishments 
and their hounds ; while the illustrious defender of truth, and 
their dear friend, was in danger of something bordering on 
indigence. But notwithstanding these unavoidable neces- 
sities of their own condition, they would have been most 



258 FORBES'S LIFE OF 

happy to have made some effort in his favour, had not a fatal 
obstacle stood in the way. That obstacle was delicacy; it 
might hurt his feelings to insinuate to him the offer of any 
thing which they themselves regarded with such a generous 
scorn as money. With sincere sorrow therefore, they were 
reduced to wait, and see what fortune might do for him. At 
last Mrs. Montague, much to her shame, violated this delicacy 
by informing him, that she would take upon herself to mend 
his condition, if a slight expectation which had begun to spring 
up from another quarter, should fail to be realized. This 
expectation was realized not long after, and his illustrious 
friends rejoiced in the double good fortune, that their delicacy 
was saved, and his purse was filled. Sir W. Forbes, one of 
those friends, and an opulent banker in Edinburgh, records 
this whole affair in the most honest simplicity of heart, just as 
we have done ourselves. 

This brings us, as we conceive, to the middle of our song. 

Now heavily comes on in clouds the day, 

The great, th' important day, big with the fate 



But it was a much better fate than that of our old friend Cato. 
After many preparatory solemnities. Dr. Beattie was intro- 
duced to their Majesties ; but a reverential awe forbids us to 
intrude our remarks on what passed in the royal sanctuary. 
We wait near the entrance till the bold adventurer returns, to 
display his acquisitions and his honours, a kind of spolia opima, 
similar to what Johnson, another great literary hero, had 
carried off sometime before, and often, as his historian tells, 
triumphantly exhibited to the wonder and envy of his nu- 
merous acquaintance. At Dr. Beattie 's return, however, we 
find him so beset with a crowd and mob of zealous friends, that 
we are glad to make our escape from the bustle, and can only 
say, that at length he went back to Scotland with an annuity 
of £200. Highly appreciating the royal bounty, he ever after- 
wards testified the liveliest gratitude ; and his attachment was 
naturally increased by the very flattering marks of friendship 
which he received from their Majesties on subsequent oc- 
casions. 

During this visit he was introduced to the distinguished 
persons whose letters are here intermixed with his own. Our 
remarks on the whole collection must be brief and general. 
Together with a great deal that ought to have been omitted, 



DR. BEATTIE. 25ft 

as neither having any intrinsic value, nor supplying any ad- 
ditional illustration of the Doctor's qualities, they contain much 
good sense, easy writing, and frank disclosure of character. 
There is also a respectable share of true criticism ; but we 
own there are not many passages that appear to us to reach 
the depths of either criticism or philosophy, v/hich indeed are 
the same. The variety of the descriptions generally bears 
the marks of the poet and the man of taste. The references 
to subjects of domestic tenderness present him in so amiable a 
light that we deeply sympathize with the melancholy which 
accompanied every recollection of the state of his family ; and it 
must have been inevitable to a man like him, to have that recol- 
lection almost continually in his mind. The direct allusions, 
however, are not often repeated, and with much propriety Sir 
William has no doubt omitted many paragraphs relating to the 
subject. 

Dr. Beattie's style is singularly free and perspicuous, and 
adapted in the highest degree to the purpose of familiar lecturing 
to his pupils ; but for an author, we should deem it something less 
than elegant, and something less than nervous. In early life 
he took great pains to imitate Addison, whose style he always 
recommended and admired. But Addison's style is not suffi- 
ciently close and firm for the use of a philosopher, and as to 
the exquisite shades of his colours, they can perhaps never be 
successfully imitated. We were rather surprised to find the 
enthusiastic admirer of Addison preferring the old Scotch ver- 
sion of the Psalms to every other; and the opinion of so 
respectable a judge put our national partialities in some degree 
of fear. But we soon recovered our complacency in our own 
venerable Sternhold and Hopkins, who, in point of harmony 
and elegance, richness and majesty, and all the other high 
attributes of poetry, have surely beaten their northern rivals. 

In many parts of the letters we are constrained to perceive 
a degree of egotism inconsistent with the dignity of a philoso- 
pher or a man. The writer seems unwilling to lose any op- 
portunity of recounting the attentions, the compliments, the tes- 
timonies of admiration, which he has received from individuals 
or the public. The complacency with which he expatiates on 
himself and his performances, is but imperfectly disguised by 
the occasional and too frequent professions of holding himself 
and those performances cheap. This is a very usual but un- 
successful expedient, with those who have reflection enough 



260 FORBES'S LIFE OF 

to be sensible that they have rather too much ostentation, hut 
not resolution enough to restrain themselves from indulging in 
it. It will unluckily happen sometimes, that these professions 
of self-disesteem will be brought into direct contrast with cer- 
tain things that betray a very different feeling. There is an 
instance of this in the second volume, p. 173, where the ex- 
pression, " you have paid too much attention to my foolish re- 
marks," is printed in the same page with this other expression, 
" poor Mr. Locke." 

Another conspicuous feature of this correspondence, is the 
gross flattery interchanged between Dr. Beattie and his friends. 
The reader is sometimes tempted to suspect, that he has been 
called to be present at a farce where the principal persons are 
flattering for a wager. During the perusal we have been 
obliged again and again to endeavour to drive out of our ima- 
gination the idea of a meeting of friends in China, where the 
first mandarin bows to the floor, and then the second mandarin 
bows to the floor, and then the first mandarin bows again to 
the floor, and thus they go on till friendship is satisfied or pa- 
tience tired. In his letters to one individual, a Duchess, the 
Doctor felt it his duty to take notice of person as well as abili- 
ties and virtues. But we should conclude that all the other 
gentlemen of her acquaintance must have been very sparing 
of compliments to her beauty, if she could be gratified by such 
as those of the professor. 

If it is not gross flattery that abounds in these letters, we 
have the more cause to be sorry for having come into the 
world some years later than Dr. Beattie and Sir W. Forbes. 
There have been better times than the present, if during the 
main part of this correspondence, every gentleman was an 
accomplished scholar, every person of opulence and power was 
humble and charitable, and every prelate an apostle. Astraea 
must have left the earth much later than report has commonly 
given out. 

The letters of the Doctor's friends constitute the smaller, 
yet a considerable proportion of the series. Those of Mrs. 
Montague are greatly superior to the rest, and excel in some 
respects those of Dr. Beattie himself. The general praise of 
good language is due to the whole collection. It may appear 
a caprice of our taste, to dislike the frequent recurrence of the 
words credit and creditahlc. " Highly creditable to his under- 
standing and his heart," " does equal credit to his talents and 



DE. BEATTIE. 261 

Lis character," &c., &;c., are phrases returning so often, that 
they become disagreeable intruders on the eye and the ear. 
The sameness of phrase is however strikingly relieved by nov- 
elty of application, in a letter of condolence from a learned pre- 
late to Dr. Beattie, after the death of his second son. Vol. II., p. 
309. The mourning father is told that, " The faith, the piety, 
the fortitude displayed by so young a man, on so awful an oc- 
sion, do infinite credit to him." As if dying were a matter of 
exhibition to be performed handsomely to please the specta- 
tors. 

Among the sensible and entertaining pieces of criticism to 
be found in the Doctor's letters, we might refer to his observa- 
tions on the novel of Clarissa, Ossian's Poems, the Nouvelle 
Eloise, Metastasio, Tasso, Caesar's Commentaries, the diction 
of the Orientals, and the Henriade. In connexion with the 
subjects of criticism, are the curious remarks on the character 
of Petrarch, and the truly fantastic picture of Lord Monboddo. 
A selection of about one -third of the materials composing 
these volumes, would make a very interesting and instructive 
book. 

Though we have complained of the mass of extraneous mat- 
ter, yet some of the facts incidentally related, are such as ought 
not to have been lost. The account of the excellent lady, 
whose husband, with all his property, perished at sea, and 
who was niece to the once celebrated Mrs. Catharine Cock- 
burn, would be very interesting, were we not convinced, from 
the internal evidence, that it is most incorrectly stated. Accord- 
ing to this account she lived, till that late period when Mrs. 
Montague settled on her an annuity for the short remainder of 
her life, in great penury ; insomuch that it was a matter of won- 
der how she contrived to preserve a tolerable appearance in re- 
spect of clothing. Now this must be an utter mistake or misrep- 
resentation, for we are told that she was well-known to many 
persons of eminent rank, and in particular was highly esteem- 
ed by the Duchess of Gordon, the possessor, as we learn from 
Dr. Beattie, of every beneficent virtue, as well as every charm, 
under heaven. The transport of surprise and gratitude dis- 
played by the aged sufferer, on being informed what Mrs. 
Montague had done, and which the narrative of Dr. Beattie 
and Sir W. Forbes would really leave us to attribute to her 
having never experienced much bounty before, was owing un- 
questionably to a very difierent cause. It was her benevolent 
12* 



262 FOEBES'S LIFE OF 

joy that a part of the ample supplies which she had received 
from her former mmiificent patrons and patronesses, and espe- 
cially the Duchess, might now be applied to the support of other 
deserving persons in distress. While remarking on the error 
of the statement, it strikes us as equally singular and merito- 
rious, that zi-e, who were never honoured with a smile or a 
nod from a peer or peeress, — that we, in our obscure garrets, 
labouring at our occupation during the day by the few glimpses 
of light that can steal through windows almost stopped up with 
old hats and bits of board to keep out the rain, and during the 
night by the lustre of farthing candles, — should be more solici- 
tous about the reputation of people of high rank, than Sir W. 
Forbes, the intimate friend of so many of them, appears in this 
instance to have been. We hope that this our virtue, in de- 
fault of other recompense, will be its own reward ; and we 
trust it will be a pledge, that, whatever culpable dispositions 
may belong to reviewers, they feel no inclination to speak evil 
of dignities. 

We could have wished to entertain an unmingled respect 
for the moral habits and religious views of Dr. Beattie ; and it 
is an ungracious thing to detect any signs of a moral latitude 
inconsistent with the religion which he wished to defend. One 
of these signs is his passion for the theatre. Who would ever 
dream, on reading the following passage, that it could have 
been written by a zealous friend of the religion of Christ ] 

*' I rejoice to hear that Mr. Garrick is so well as to be able to appear in 
tragedy. It is in vain to indulge one's self in unavailing complaints, other, 
wise I could rail by the hour at Dame Fortune, for placing- me beyond the 
reach of that arch-magician, as Horace would have called him. I well 
remember, and I think I can never forget, how he once affected me in 
Macbeth, and made me almost throw myself over the front seat of the two- 
shilling gallery. I wish I had another opportunity of risking my neck and 
nerves in the same cause. To fall by the hands of Garrick and Shak- 
speare, would ennoble my memory to all generations. To be serious, if all 
actors were like this one, I do not think it would be possible for a person 
of sensibility to outlive the representation of Hamlet, Lear, or Macbeth ; 
which, by the by, seems to suggest a reason for that mixture of comedy 
and tragedy of which our great poet was so fond, and which the Frenchi- 
fied critics think such an intolerable outrage both against nature and de- 
cency. Against nature, it is no outrage at all ; the inferior officers of a 
court know very little of what passes among kings and statesmen ; and 
may be very merry, when their superiors are very sad ; and if so, the por- 
ter's soliloquy in Macbeth may be a very just imitation of nature. And 
I can never accuse of indency the man, who, by the introduction of a little 
unexpected merriment, saves me from a disordered head, or a broken 



DR. BEATTIE. 263 

heart. If Shakspeare knew his own powers, he must have seen the ne- 
cessity of tempering' his tragic rage by a mixture of comic ridicule ; other- 
wise tliere was some danger of his running into greater excesses than deer- 
steahng, by sporting with the lives of all the people of taste in these realms. 
Other play-wrights must conduct their approaches to the human heart with 
the utmost circumspection, a single false step may make them lose a great 
deal of ground ; but Shakspeare made his way to it at once, and could 
make his audience burst tlieir sides this moment, and break their hearts 
the next. I have often seen Hamlet performed by the underlings of the 
theatre, but none of these seemed to understand what they were about. 
Hamlet's character, though perfectly natural, is so very uncommon, that 
few, even of our critics, can enter into it. Sorrow, indignation, revenge, 
and consciousness of his own irresolution, tear his heart ; the pecuHarity of 
his circumstances often obliges him to counterfeit madness, and the storm 
of passions within him often drives him to the verge of real madness. 
This produces a situation so interesting, and a conduct so complicated, as 
none but Shakspeare could have had the courage to describe, and none but 
Garrick will ever be able to exhibit. Excuse this rambling ; I know you 
like the subject ; and for my part I like it so much, that when I once get 
in, I am not willing to find my way out of it." — Vol. I. pp. 218 — 220. 

We may also be allowed to ask, how it consisted with that 
full approbation which he uniformly avowed of the established 
church of England, to spend the Sabbath in a convivial party 
with Sir J. Reynolds, Baretti, and other persons, some of whom 
would most likely have laughed at him, had he hinted any 
recollection of the duty of public worship ? This w^as not a 
singular ofience with him. 

Religious opinions, in the strict sense, are scarcely disclos- 
ed in any part of the work, except occasionally by implication, 
as in the following sentence : " The virtue of even the best 
man must, in order to appear meritorious at the great tribunal, 
have something added to it which man cannot bestow." We 
were sincerely grieved to meet with so grand a mistake of the 
nature of Christianity. On the whole, we fear Dr. Beattie 
conformed in his moral principles too much to the fashion of 
reputable men of the world, and in his religious ones too much 
to the fashion of scholars and philosophers. This fear was in 
no degree obviated, by our finding the first of his precepts to 
a young minister of the gospel to be exactly this, " Read the 
classics day and night." We are forcibly reminded, by con- 
trast, of the injunctions given to Timothy, by the prince of the 
apostles. 

We question, too, whether the Doctor, in another instance, 
acquitted himself very uprightly as a " soul-doctor," (for thus 
he terms himself;) we refer to his prescription for a noble 



264 FORBES'S LIFE OF DR. BEATTIE. 

Duchess, whose name occurs very often within these pages. 
There was a period, we find, when that lady was disposed to 
solitude and reflection ; one of those awful periods at which the 
destiny of an individual seems oscillating in suspense, and a 
small influence of advice, or circumstance, has the power to 
decide it. ' How Dr. Beattie used this entrusted moment, may 
be seen from the following admonitions : 

•• Seasons of recollection may be useful ; birt when one begins to find 
pleasure in sig-hingover Young's ' Night Thoughts' in a corner, it is time 

to shut the book, and return to the company Such things may 

help to soften a rugged mind ; and I believe 1 might have been the better 
for them. But your Grace's heart is already ' too feelingly alive to each 
fine impulse ;' and, therefore, to you I would recommend gay thoughts, 
cheerful books, and sprightly company." — Vol. II. pp. 28, 29. 

We are doubtful which most to admire, the rigid friendship 
of the adviser, or the notorious docility of the pupil ; the degree 
in which they both exemplify the predominance of a devotional 
spirit, appears to be nearly equal. 

Here our remarks must be concluded. The closing part of 
Dr. Beattie's life is as affecting as any tragedy we ever read, 
and will appeal irresistibly to the sympathy of every reader 
who can reflect or feel. His health had been ruined by intense 
study, and the hopeless giief arising from the circumstance 
already mentioned. Under the loss of his nearest relative by 
what was far worse than her death, his eldest son, an admir- 
able youth, became the object of unbounded aflection. At the 
age of twenty -two he died. A few years after, his remaining 
son, not equally interesting with the other, but yet an excellent 
young man, died also. The afflicted parent manifested a re- 
signation to the divine will which cannot be surpassed. But 
nature sunk by degrees into a state, from which his friends 
could not but congratulate his deliverance by death. 



DEFECTIVE STANDARD OF MORALS. 265 

XL 

FASHIONABLE LIFE. 



Tales of Fashionable Life. By Miss Edgeworth, Author 
of Practical Education, Belinda, &c. 

On the supposition, or the chance, that any small number of our 
readers may not have taken the trouble to acquaint themselves 
with the distinguishing qualities of the productions of a writer, 
who has already contributed the amount of more than twenty 
volumes to the otherwise scanty stock of our literature, — and, 
if we may judge from the short interval between the works in 
the latter part of the series, is likely at the very least, to double 
the number, — it may not be amiss to set down a very few ob- 
servations, suggested chiefly by the perusal of one portion of 
her performances, though it belongs by its form to a depart- 
ment over which we do not pretend any right of habitual cen- 
sorship. 

It is evident this writer has a much higher object than 
merely to amuse. Being very seriously of opinion that man- 
kind want mending, and that she is in possession of one of the 
most efficacious arts for such a purpose, she has set about the 
operation in good earnest. But when any machine, material 
or moral, is wrong, there are a few very obvious prerequisites 
to the attempt to set it right. The person that undertakes it 
should know what the machine was designed for ; should per- 
ceive exactly what part of its present action is defective or 
mischievous ; should discern the cause of this disordered ef- 
fect ; and, for the choice of the implements and method of cor- 
rection, should have the certainty of the adept, instead of the 
guesses of the tampering experimenter, or the downright har- 
dihood of ignorant presumption. When the disordered subject 
to be operated on is a thing of no less importance than human 
nature, it should seem that these prerequisites are peculiarly 
indispensable ; and the existence ought to be inferrible from 



266 



EDGEWORTH S TALES. 



the operator's boldness, if we see him putting to the work so 
confident a hand as that of our author. A hand more confi- 
dent, apparently, has very seldom been applied to the business 
of moral correction ; and that business is prosecuted in a man- 
ner so little implying, on the part of our author, any acknow- 
ledgment that she is working on a subordinate ground, and 
according to the lowest class of the principles of moral disci- 
pline, — and therefore so little hinting even the existence of 
any more elevated and authoritative principles, — that she is 
placed within the cognizance of a much graver sort of criticism 
than would at first view appear applicable to a writer of tales. 
She virtually takes her rank among the teachers who profess 
to exhibit the comprehensive theory of duty and happiness. 
She would be considered as undertaking the treatment of what 
is the most serious and lamentable, as w^ell as what is most 
light and ridiculous, in human perversity ; and according to a 
method which at all events cannot be exceeded in soundness^ 
however it may prove in point of efiicacy. 

Now when we advert to the prerequisites for such an under- 
taking, we cannot repress the suspicion that our author is un- 
qualified for it. It is a grand point of incompetency if she is 
totally ignorant what the human race exists for. And there 
appears nothing in the present, or such other of her works as 
we have happened to look into, to prevent the surmise, that this 
question would completely baffle her. Reduce her to say 
what human creatures were made for, and there would be an 
end of her volubility. Whether our species were intended as 
an exhibition for the amusement of some superior, invisible, 
and malignant intelligences ; or were sent here to expiate the 
crimes of some pre-existent state ; or were made for the pur- 
pose, as some philosophers will have it and phrase it, of devel- 
oping the facilities of the earth, that is to say, managing its veg- 
etable produce, extracting the wealth of its mines, and the like ; 
or were merely a contrivance for giving to a certain number 
of atoms the privilege of being, for a few years, the constitu- 
ent particles of warm upright living figures ; — whether they 
are appointed to any future state of sentiment or rational ex- 
istence ; — whether, if so, it is to be one fixed state, or a series 
of transmigrations ; a higher or lower state than the present ; 
a state of retribution, or bearing no relation to moral qualities ; 
— whether there be any Supreme Power, that presides over 
the succession and condition of the race, and will see to their 



DEFECTIVE STANDARD OF MORALS. 267 

ultimate destination, — or, in short, whether there be any de- 
sign, contrivance, or intelligent destination in the whole aflair, 
or the tact be not rather, that the species, with all its present 
circumstances, and whatever is to become of it hereafter, is 
the production and sport of chance, — all these questions are 
probably undecided in the mind of our ingenious moralist. 
And how can she be qualified to conduct the discipline of a 
kind of beings of the nature and relations of which she is so 
profoundly ignorant ? If it were not a serious thing on account 
of its presumption, would it not be an incomparably ludicrous 
one on account of its absurdity, that a popular instructor should 
be most busily enforcing a set of principles of action — not as 
confessedly superficial and occasional, and merely subservient 
to a specific purpose, but as fundamental and comprehensive — 
while that instructor does not know whether the creatures, 
whose characters are attempted to be formed on those princi- 
ples, are bound or not by the laws of a Supreme Governor, nor 
whether they are to be affected by the right or wrong of moral 
principles for only a few times twelve months, or to all eterni- 
ty ? — Here an admirer of Miss Edge worth's moral philosophy 
might be expected to say, " But why may not our professor be 
allowed to set these considerations out of the question ; since 
many things in the theory of morals are very clear and very im- 
portant independently of them ? Integrity, prudence, industry, 
generosity, and good manners, can be shown to be vitally con- 
nected with our immediate interests, and powerfully enforced 
on that ground, whether there be or be not a Supreme Gov- 
ernor and Judge, and a future life ; and why may not our in- 
structor hold this ground, exempt from the interference of the- 
ology ] What we see we know : we can actually survey the 
whole scope of what you call the presejit life of human crea- 
tures, and can discern how its happiness is afl'ected by the vir- 
tues and vices which our professor so forcibly illustrates : and 
why may it not be a very useful employment to teach the art of 
happiness thus fa?; whatever may ultimately be found to be the 
truth or error of the speculations on invisible beings and future 
existences ?" 

To this the obvious reply would be, first — in terms of identi- 
cal import with those we have already used — that the ingenious 
preceptress does not give her pupils the slightest word of warn- 
ing, that it is possible their moral interests may be of an extent 
infinitely beyond anything she takes into account : that if the 



268 edgeworth's tales. 

case is so, her philosophy, however useful to a certain length, 
in a particular way, cannot but be infinitely inadequate as a 
disciplinary provision for their entire interests ; and that, there- 
fore, in consideration of such a possibility, it is their serious 
duty to inquire hoAV much more it may be indispensable to 
learn, than she ever professes to teach them. She does not 
tell them, and would deem it excessively officious and fanati- 
cal in any one that should do it for her, that if there be any 
truth — nay, if there be the bare 'possihility of truth — in what 
religionists believe and teach — a philosopher like her cannot 
be admitted as competent to contribute to the happiness of 
mankind, in a much higher capacity than the persons that 
make clothes and furnish houses. She may not, in so many 
words, assert it would be idle or delusive to think of proposing 
any superior and more remotely prospective system of moral 
principles : but all appearances are carefully kept up to the 
point of implying as much ; and we apprehend she would be 
diverted, or would be fretted, just as the mood of her mind hap- 
pened at the moment to be, to hear a sensible person, after 
reading her volumes, say, — " very just, very instructive, on a 
narrow and vulgar ground of moral calculation ; it is well fit- 
ted to make me a reputable sort of a man, and not altogether 
useless, during a few changes of the moon : if I were sure of 
ending after a few of those changes, in nothing but a clod, I 
do not know that I should want anything beyond the lessons 
of this philosopher's school : but while I believe there is even 
a chance of a higher destiny, it is an obvious dictate of com- 
mon sense, that it cannot be safe, and that it would be degrad- 
ing, to attempt to satisfy myself with a little low scheme of 
morality, adapted to nothing in existence beyond the mere con- 
venience of some score or two of years, more or less." Our 
frst censure is, then, that, setting up for a moral guide, our au- 
thor does not pointedly state to her followers, that as it is but a 
very short stage she can pretend to conduct them, they had 
need — if they suspect they shall be obliged to go further — ^to 
be looking out, even in the very beginning of this short stage 
in which she accompanies them, for other guides to undertake 
for their safety in the remoter region. She presents herself 
with the air and tone of a person ^vho would sneer or spurn at 
the apprehensive insinuated inquiry, whether any change or 
addition of guides might eventually become necessary. 

But, secondly, our author's moral system — on the hypothe- 



DEFECTIVE STANDARD OF MORALS. 269 

sis of the truth, or possible truth, of revelation — is not only 
infinitely deticient, as being calculated to subserve the inter- 
ests of the human creatures only to so very short a distance, 
while yet it carefully keeps out of sight all that may be be- 
yond ; it is also — still on the same hypothesis — perniciously 
erroneous as far as it goes. For it teaches virtue on princi- 
ples on which virtue itself will not be approved by the Su- 
preme Governor ; and it avowedly encourages some disposi- 
tions, and directly or by implication tolerates others, which 
in the judgment of that Governor are absolutely vicious. As 
to the unsound quality of the virtue here taught, it would be 
quite enough to observe, that it bears no reference whatever 
to the M'ill and laws of a superior Being. It is careless, 
whether there is such a Being, — whether, if there be, men 
are accountable to him, or not, — whether he has appointed 
laws, — whether he can enforce them, — whether he can punish 
the refusal to obey them. In short, it is a virtue that would 
not he j)ractised for his sale ; which is to be practised solely 
under the influence of other considerations ; and which would 
be, at the dictate of those considerations, varied to any ex- 
tent from any standard alleged to bear his authority. It is 
really superfluous to say that, on the religious hypothesis, 
such a virtue is utterly spurious, and partakes radically of the 
worst principles of vice. It is, besides, unstable in all its 
laws, as being founded on a combination of principles unde- 
fined, arbitrary, capricious, and sometimes incompatible. — 
Pride, honour, generous impulse, calculation of temporal ad- 
vantage and custom of the country, are convened along with 
we know not how many other grave authorities, as the com- 
ponents of Miss Edgeworth's moral government — the Am- 
phictyons of her legislative assembly. These authorities be- 
ing themselves subject, singly or collectively, to no one par- 
amount authority, may vary Avithout end in their compromise 
with one another, and in their enactment of laAvs ; so that 
by the time JMiss Edgeworth comes to write her last volume 
in the concluding year of her life, she may chance to find 
it necessary — in maintaining a faithful adherence to them 
through all their caprices — to give the name of virtues to 
sundry things she now calls vices, and vice versa. There 
can be no decisive casuistry on the ground of such a system ; 
and it would be easy to imagine situations in which the ques- 
tion of duty would, even under the present state of that 



270 edgeworth's tales. 

moral legislation which she enjoins us to revere, put her to as 
complete a nonplus as the question, " What was man made 
for]" — She is, however, dexterous enough, in general, to 
avoid such situations. It must be acknowledged, too, that 
perhaps the greater part of the moral practice which she 
sanctions, is, taken merely as practice, disconnected from all 
consideration of motives and opinions, substantially the same 
that the soundest moralist must inculcate, — unless his lectures 
could be allowed to be silent on the topics of justice in the 
transactions of business, the advantages of cultivating a habit 
of general kindness and liberality, exertions for amending 
the condition of the poor, patient iirmness in the prosecution 
of good designs, with various other things of a character 
equally unequivocal. But there are some parts of her prac- 
tical exhibitions unmarked with any note of disapprobation, 
where a Christian moralist would apply the most decided cen- 
sure. She shows, for instance, a very great degree of toler- 
ance for the dissipation of the wealthy classes, if it only stop 
short of utter frivolity or profligacy, and of ruinous expense. 
All the virtue she demands of them may easily comport with 
a prodigious quantity of fashion, and folly, and splendour, and 
profuseness. They may be allowed to whirl in amusements 
till they are dead sick, and then have recourse to a little 
sober useful goodness to recover themselves. They are in- 
deed advised to cultivate their minds ; but, as it should seem, 
for the purpose, mainly, of giving dignity to their rank, and 
zest and sparkle to the conversations of their idle and elegant 
parties. They are recommended to become the promoters 
of useful schemes in their neighbourhoods, and the patrons 
of the poor ; but it does not appear that this philanthropy is 
required to be carried the length of costing any serious per- 
centage on their incomes. The grand and ultimate object of 
all the intellectual and moral exertions to which our author is 
trying to coax and prompt them, is, confessedly, — self-com- 
placency ; and it is evident that, while surrounded incessantly 
with frivolous and selfish society to compare themselves with, 
they may assume this self-complacency on the strength of 
very middling attainments in wisdom and beneficence. 

Another gross fault (on the supposition, still, that religion 
may chance to be more than an idle fancy) is our author's toler- 
ance of profaneness. As to some of the instances of Avhat 
every pious man would regard as profane expressions, either 



DEFECTIVE STANDARD OF MORALS. 271 

absolutely or by the connexion in which they are put, she 
will say, perhaps, that they are introduced merely as a lan- 
guage appropriate to the characters ; and that those charac- 
ters were never meant for patterns of excellence. This plea 
is of little validity for any narrator but the historian of real 
facts, who has but a partial option as to what he shall relate. 
In a merely literary court, indeed, it might go some length in 
defence of a fictitious writer ; but let religion be introduced 
among the judges in such a court, and the decision would be, 
that minute truth of fictitious representation involves no moral 
benefit adequate to compensate the mischief of familiarizing 
the reader's mind to language which associates the most 
solemn ideas with the most trifling or detestable. But this 
happens, in the present instance, to be a needless argument ; 
for the broadest and vilest piece of profaneness comes out in 
one of what are intended as the finest moments, of one of 
what are intended as the finest characters, in all these volumes. 
The character, — a spirited, generous, clever fellow, evidently 
a high favourite of our author, — is young Beaumont, in the 
tale entitled " 3IancBuvringj^^ in the third volume ; the moment 
is when he is exulting (p. 78) at the news of a great naval 
victory, in which his most esteemed friend is supposed to have 
had a share. 

We will only add, in order to get to the end of this homily 
of criticism, that our author's estimate of the evil of vice in 
general, excepting such vices as are glaringly marked with 
meanness or cruelty, appears to be exceedingly light in com- 
parison with that which is taught in the school of revelation. 
And, consistently with this, the sentiments of penitential grief 
which she attributes to one of her principal characters. Lord 
Glenthorn, whom she reforms from a very great degree of 
profligacy, are wonderfully superficial and transient : nay, he 
is even made, in the commencement of his reformation, to 
reckon up the virtues of his past worthless and vicious life, 
with a self-complacency which far over-balanced his self- 
reproaches. And indeed those self-reproaches, when they 
were felt, had but extremely little of the quality of what, in 
Christian language, is meant by repentance : they are made 
to have expressed themselves much more in the manner of 
mortified pride. And this, again, is in perfect consistency 
with the motives to virtue on which the chief reliance appears 
to be placed throughout these volumes : for the most powerful 



272 EDGEWORTn's TALES. 

of those motives is pride. To mancEuvre this passion in every 
mode which ingenuity can suggest ; to ply it with every va- 
riety of stimuhis, and contrive that at each step of vice some- 
thing shall happen to mortify it, — ^if possible, according to 
the regular and natural course of cause and effect, if not, by 
some extraordinary occurrence, taking place at the will of 
the writer, — and that each step of virtue shall be attended by 
some circumstance signally gratifying to it, — this is the grand 
moral machinery of our moralist and reformer. And indeed 
Avhat else could she do, or what better, after she had resolved 
that no part of her apparatus should be put in action by " the 
powers of the world to come ]" For as to that intrinsic beauty 
of virtue which philosophers have pretended to descry and 
adore, this philosopher knew right well how likely it was that 
such a vision should disclose itself, with all its mystical fas- 
cinations, to the frequenters of ball-rooms and card-tables, 
of galas and operas, of gambling-houses and brothels. 

Thus denied, by the quality of the subjects she has to w^ork 
upon, the assistance of all that has been boasted by sages as 
the most refined and elevated in philosophy, — and by the 
limits of her creed, probably, as well as the disposition of 
her taste, the assistance of those principles professing to 
come from heaven, and which, whencesoever they have come, 
have formed the best and sublimest human characters that 
ever appeared on earth, — our moralist would be an object of 
much commiseration, if she did not manifest the most entire 
self-complacency. Yet it is but justice to say, that she does 
not attribute any miraculous power to those sordid moral prin- 
ciples, on the sole operation of which she is content to rest 
her hopes of human improvement. For on Lord Glenthorn, 
the hero of the longest and most interesting of these tales, 
she represents this operation as totally inefficacious till aided 
by the discovery that he is no Lord ; having been substituted 
in his infoncy for the true infant peer by Ellinor O'Donoghoe, 
the inhabitant of a dirty mud cabin, his mother, and that 
peer's nurse. And the subject w^hich is thus made to illustrate 
the inefficacy is, notwithstanding, represented as naturally 
endowed with very favourable dispositions and very good tal- 
ents. In the stories of " Almeria " and " Manceuvring,^^ the 
utmost powers of the reforming discipline are honestly re- 
presented as fairly baffled, from beginning to end, the cul- 
prits adhering to their faults and follies with inviolable jfidelity, 



273 

-—leaving our moral legislator no means of vindicating the 
merits of her system, but to show that the pride, and other 
inglorious principles, by the operation of which a reform of 
conduct was to have been effected, if they cannot amend the 
subjects of her discipline, can at least make them wretched. 
And so she leaves them, with as much indifference appar- 
ently as that with which a veteran sexton comes away from 
filling up the grave of one of his neighbours. She does not 
even, as far as appears, wish to turn them over to methodism, 
notwithstanding that this has the repute of sometimes working 
very strange transformations, and might as well have been 
mentioned as a last expedient worth the trying, in some of 
those obstinate desperate cases in which all the preparations 
from the great laboratory at Edgeworthstown, have been em- 
ployed in vain. Perhaps, however, our author would think 
such a remedy, even in its utmost success, worse than the 
disease. Yet it would be a little curious to observe what she 
really woiiJd think and say at witnessing an instance in which 
a person, who had long pursued a foolish or profligate course 
in easy defiance of all such correctives as constitute her 
boasted discipline, being, at length, powerfully arrested by 
the thought of a judgment to come, — should forswear, at once, 
all his inveterate trifling or deeper immoralities, and adopt, 
and prosecute to his last hour, and with the highest delight, 
a far more arduous plan of virtue than any that she has dared 
to recommend or delineate. There have been very many 
such instances ; and it would be extremely amusing — if some 
ideas too serious for amusement were not involved — on citing 
to her some induljitable example of this kind, to compel her 
to answer the plain question, — " Is this a good thing — ^yea 
or no ?" 

It was almost solely for the purpose of making a few re- 
marks on the moral tendency of our author's voluminous pro- 
ductions, that we have noticed the work of which we have 
transcribed the title ; and we need say very few words re- 
specting the other qualities of her books. For predominant 
good sense, knowledge of the world, discrimination of cha- 
racter, truth in the delineation of manners, and spirited dia- 
logue, it is hardly possible to praise them too much. Most of 
her characters are formed from the most genuine and ordinary 
materials of human nature, — with very little admixture of any 
thing derived from heaven, or the garden of Eden, or the mag- 



S74 EDGEWORTH S TALES. 

nificent part of the regions of poetry. There is rarely any 
thing to awaken for one moment the enthusiasm of an aspir- 
ing spirit, delighted to contemplate, and ardent to resemble, a 
model of ideal excellence. Indeed, a higher order of charac- 
ters would in a great measure have precluded an exercise of 
her talents in which she evidently delights, and in which she 
very highly excels — that is, the analyzing of the mixed motives 
by which persons are often governed, while they are giving 
themselves credit for being actuated by one simple and per- 
fectly laudable motive : the detecting of all the artifices of dis- 
simulation, and the illustration of all the modes in which 
sellishness pervades human society. Scarcely has Swift him- 
self evinced a keener scent in pursuit of this sort of game ; a 
sort of game which, we readily acknowledge it is, with cer- 
tain benevolent limitations, very fair and useiul to hunt. And 
we must acknowledge too, that our author, while passing 
shrewd, is by no means cynical. She is very expert at con- 
triving situations for bringing out all the qualities of her per- 
sonages, for contrasting those personages with one another, 
for creating excellent amusement by their mutual reaction, and 
for rewarding or punishing their merits or faults. She ap- 
pears intimately acquainted with the prevailing notions, pre- 
judices, and habits, of the different ranks and classes of 
society. She can imitate, very satirically, the peculiar diction 
and slang of each ; and has contrived, but indeed it needed 
very little contrivance, to make the fashionable dialect of the 
upper ranks sound exceedingly silly. As far as she has had 
opportunities for observation, she has caught a very discrimi- 
native idea of national characters : that of the Irish is delin- 
eated with incomparable accuracy and spirit. It may be 
added, that our author, possessing a great deal of general 
knowledge, finds many lucky opportunities for producing it, in 
short arguments and happy allusions. 



LIFE OF BLAIR. 275 

XII. 

HUGHBLAIR. 



An Account of the Life and Writings of Hitgh Blair, D.D,, 
F.R.S.E., one of the Ministers of the High Churchy and 
Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University 
of Edinburgh. By John Hill, LL.D., F.R.S.E., Profes- 
sor of Humanity in the University. 

There appears to be some cause for apprehension, lest the 
extravagant admiration once lavished on Dr. Blair should de- 
cline, by degrees, into a neglect that will withhold even com- 
mon justice. No productions so celebrated at first, as his ser- 
mons, have perhaps ever come in so short a time to be so 
nearly forgotten. Even before the conclusion of the series, 
the public enthusiasm and avidity had begun to languish, and 
the last volume seemed only announced in order to attend the 
funeral of its predecessors. The once delighted readers ex- 
cused the change of their taste by pretending, and perhaps 
believing, that a great disparity was observable betw^een the 
two prior volumes and those M^hich followed them. The 
alleged inferiority might possibly exist in a certain degree ; 
but the altered feeling Avas in a much greater degree owing 
to the recovery of sober sense, from the temporary inebria- 
tion of novelty and fashion ; and the recovery was accompa- 
nied by a measure of that mortification, which seeks to be con- 
soled by prompting a man to revenge himself on what has be- 
trayed him into the folly. 

As a critical writer, however. Dr. Blair has suffered much 
less from the lapse of years. His lectures have found their 
place and established their character among a highly respect- 
able rank of books, and will always be esteemed valuable as 
an exercise of correct taste, and an accumulation of good 
sense, on the various branches of the art of speaking and 
writing. It was not absolutely necessary they should bear the 



276 LIFE OF BLAIR. 

marks of genius, it was not indispensable that they should be 
richly ornamented ; but yet we can by no means agree with 
this biographer, that ornament would have been out of place, 
and that the dry style which prevails throughout the lectures 
is the perfection of excellence in writings on criticism. It 
has been often enough repeated, that such a bare thin style is 
the proper one for scientitic disquisitions, of which the object 
is pure truth, and the instrument pure intellect : but, in 
general criticism, so much is to be done through the interven- 
tion of taste and imagination, that these faculties have a very 
great right to receive some tribute, of their own proper kind, 
from a writer who wishes to establish himself in their peculiar 
province. And the writings of Dryden, Addison, and John- 
son, will amply show what graces may be imparted to critical 
subjects by a tine imagination, without in the least preventing 
or perplexing the due exercise of the reader's understanding. 
We are not so absurd as to reproach Dr. Blair for not having 
a fine imagination ; but we must censure his panegyrist for 
attempting to turn this want into a merit. Philosophical crit- 
icism, indeed, like that of Lord Karnes and Dr. Campbell, 
which attempts to discover the abstract principles, rather than 
to illustrate the specific rules, of excellence in the fine arts, — 
and between the object of which, and of Dr. Blair's criticism, 
there is nearly the same difference as between the office of 
an anatomist who dissects, or a chemist who decomposes 
beautiful forms, and an artist who looks at and delineates 
them, — may do well to adhere to a plainer language ; b\it the 
biographer has judiciously withdrawn all claims, in behalf of 
Dr. Blair, to the character of a philosophical critic. He has 
acknowledged and even exposed the slightness of the Profes- 
sor's observations on the formation of language. He has not, 
however, said one word of the irreligious inconsistency and 
folly of professing a zealous adherence to revelation, and at the 
same time, labouring to deduce the very existence of lan- 
guage, in a very slow progress, from inarticulate noises, the 
grand original element of speech, as it seems, among the 
primeval gentlefolk, at the time when they went on all-four, 
and grubbed up roots, and picked up acorns. Our readers 
will remember the happy ridicule of a part of this theory, in 
one of Cowper's letters, in which he humorously teaches one 
of these clever savages to make the sentence, " Oh, give me 
apple." They may find the system ably and argumentatively 



CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS SERMOXS. 277 

exploded in Rousseau's " Discourse on the Inequality of Man- 
kind." While this part of the lectures is given up to deserved 
neglect, we think the ^vork will, on the whole, always main- 
tain its character, as a comprehensive body of sensible criti- 
cism, and of very valuable directions in the art of writing. 
We agree with this biographer, in admiring especially the lec- 
tures on the subject of style. 

But it is rather on the unrivalled excellence of the Sermons 
that Dr. Hill seems inclined to found the assurance of Dr. 
Blair's celebrity in future times. In order to persuade our- 
selves into the same opinion, we have been reading some of 
the most noted of those performances. And they possess 
some obvious merits, of which no reader can be insensible. 
The first is, perhaps, that they are not too long. It is not im- 
pertinent to specify the first, because we can put it to the con- 
sciences of our readers, whether, in opening a volume of ser- 
mons, their first point of inspection relative to any one which 
they are inclined to choose for its text or title, is not to ascer- 
tain the length. The next recommendation of the Doctor's 
sermons, is a very suitable, though scarcely ever striking, in- 
troduction, which leads directly to the business, and opens into 
a very plain and lucid distribution of the subject. Another is 
a correct and perspicuous language ; and it is to be added, 
that the ideas are almost always strictly pertinent to the sub- 
ject. This, however, forms but a very small part of the ap- 
plause which was bestowed on these sermons during the 
transient day of their fame. They were then considered by 
many as examples of true eloquence ; a distinction never per- 
haps attributed, in any other instance, to performances marked 
by such palpable deficiencies and faults. 

In the first place, with respect to the language, though the 
selection of words is proper enough, the arrangement of them 
in the sentence is often in the utmost degree stiff and artifi- 
cial. It is hardly possible to depart further from any resem- 
blance to what is called a living, or spoken style, which is the 
proper diction at all events for popular addresses, if not for all 
the departments of prose composition. Instead of the thought 
throwing itself into words, by a free, instantaneous, and 
almost unconscious action, and passing off in that easy form, 
it is pretty apparent there was a good deal of handicraft em- 
ployed in getting ready proper cases and trusses, of various 
but carefully measured lengths and figures, to put the thoughts 
13 



278 LIFE OF BLAIK. 

into, as they came out, in very slow succession, each of them 
cooled and stiffened to numbness in waiting so long to be 
dressed. Take, for example, such sentences as these : 
" Great has been the corruption of the world in every age. 
Sufficient ground there is for the complaints made by serious 
observers, at all times, of abounding iniquity and folly." 
" For rarely, or never, is old age contemned, unless when, by 
vice or folly, it renders itself contemptible." " Vain, nay 
often dangerous, were youthful enterprises, if not conducted 
by aged prudence." " If, dead to these calls, you already 
languish in slothful inaction," &c. " Smiling very often is 
the aspect, and smooth are the words of those who inwardly 
are the most ready to think evil of others." " Exempt, on 
the one hand, from the dark jealousy of a suspicious mind, it 
is no less removed, on the other, from that easy credulity 
which," &c. "Formidable, I admit, this may justly render it 
to them who have no inward fund," &c. " Though such em- 
ployments of fancy come not under the same description with 
those which are plainly criminal, yet wholly unblameable they 
seldom are." " With less external majesty it was attended, 
but is, on that account, the more wonderful, that under an ap- 
pearance so simple, such great events were covered." 

There is also a perpetual recurrence of a form of the sen- 
tence, which might be occasionally graceful, or tolerable, when 
very sparingly adopted, but is extremely unpleasing when it 
comes often ; we mean that construction in which the qualhy 
or condition of the agent or subject is expressed first, and the 
agent or subject itself is put to bring up the latter clause. 
For instance, " Pampered by continual indulgence, all our pas- 
sions will become mutinous and headstrong." " Practised in 
the ways of men, they are apt to be suspicious of design and 
fraud," &c, "Injured or oppressed by the world, he looks up 
to a judge who will vindicate his cause." 

In the second place, there is no texture in the composition. 
The sentences appear often like a series of little independent 
propositions, each satisfied with its own distinct meaning, 
and capable of being placed in a different part of the train, 
without injury to any mutual connexion, or ultimate purpose, 
of the thoughts. The ideas r'elate to the subject generally, 
Avithout specifically relating to one another. They all, if we 
may so speak, gravitate to one centre, but have no mutual 
attraction among themselves. The mind must often dismiss 



CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS SER3iONS. 279 

entirehj the idea in one sentence, in order to proceed to that 
in the next ; instead of feeling that the second, though dis- 
tinct, yet necessarily retains the first still in mind, and partly 
derives its force from it ; and that they both contribute, in 
connexion with several more sentences, to form a grand com- 
plex scheme of thought, each of them producing a tar greater 
effect, as a part of the combination, than it would have done 
as a little thought standing alone. The consequence of this 
defect is, that the emphasis of the sentiment and the crisis or 
conclusion of the argument comes nowhere ; since it cannot 
be in any single insulated thought, and there is not mutual 
dependence and co-operation enough to produce any com- 
bined result. Nothing is proved, nothing is enforced, nothing 
is taught, by a mere accumulation of self-evident propositions, 
most of which are necessarily trite, and some of which, when 
they are so many, must be trivial. With a few exceptions, 
this appears to us to be the character of these sermons. The 
sermon, perhaps, most deserving to be excepted, is that " On 
the Importance of Religious Knowledge to Mankind," which 
exhibits a respectable degree of concatenation of thought, 
and deduction of argument. It would seem as if Dr. Blair 
had been a little aware of this defect, as there is an occa- 
sional appearance of remedial contrivance ; he has some- 
times inserted the logical signs ^br and since, when the con- 
nexion or dependence is really so very slight or unimportant 
that they might nearly as well be left out. 

If, in the next place, we were to remark on the figures in- 
troduced in the course of these sermons, we presume we 
should have every reader's concurrence that they are, for the 
most part, singularly trite ; so much so, that the volumes 
might be taken, more properly than any other modern book 
that we know, as comprising the whole common-places of 
imagery. A considerable portion of the produce of imagina- 
tion was deemed an indispensable ingredient of eloquence, 
and the quota was therefore to be had in any way and of any 
kind. But the guilt of plagiarism was effectually avoided, by 
taking a portion of what society had long agreed to consider 
as made common and free to all. When occasionally there 
occurs a simile or metaphor of the writer's own production, it 
is adjusted with an artificial nicety, bearing a little resem- 
blance to the labour and finish we sometimes see bestowed 
on the tricking out of an only child. It should, at the same 



280 LIFE OF BLAIE. 

time, be allowed, that the consistency of the figures, whether 
common or unusual, is in general accurately preserved. The 
reader will be taught, however, not to reckon on this as a 
certainty. We have just opened on the following sentence : 
" Death is the gate which, at the same time that it closes on 
this world, opens into eternity." (Sermon on Death.) We 
cannot comprehend the construction and movement of such a 
gate, unless it is like that which we sometimes see in place 
of a stile, playing loose in a space between two posts ; and 
we can hardly think so humble an object could be in the 
author's mind, while thinking of the passage to another 
world. 

With respect to the general power of thinking displayed in 
these sermons, we apprehend that discerning readers are 
coming fast toward a uniformity of opinion. They will all 
cheerfully agree that the author carries good sense along with 
him, wherever he goes ; that he keeps his subjects distinct ; 
that he never wanders from the one in hand ; that he presents 
concisely very many important lessons of sound morality ; 
and that in doing this he displays an uncommon knowledge of 
the more obvious qualities of human nature. He is never 
trifling nor fantastic ; every page is sober, and pertinent to 
the subject ; and resolute labour has prevented him from ever 
falling in a mortifying degree below the level of his best style 
of performance. He is seldom below a respectable medi- 
ocrity, but, we are forced to admit, that he very rarely rises 
above it. After reading five or six sermons, we become as- 
sured that we most perfectly see the whole compass and reach 
of his powers, and that, if there were twenty volumes, we 
might read on through the whole, without ever coming to a 
bold conception, or a profound investigation, or a burst of 
genuine enthusiasm. There is not in the train of thought a 
succession of eminences and depressions, rising towards sub- 
limity, and descending into familiarity. There are no pecu- 
liarly striking short passages where the mind wishes to stop 
awhile, to indulge its delight, if it were not irresistibly car- 
ried forward by the rapidity of the thought. There are none 
of those happy reflections back on a thought just departing 
which seem to give it a second and a stronger significance, 
in addition to that which it had most obviously presented. 
Though the mind does not proceed with any eagerness to 
what is to come, it is seldom inclined to revert to what is gone 



CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS SERMONS. 281 

by ; and any contrivance in the composition to tempt it to 
look back with lingering partiality to the receding ideas, is 
forborne by the writer ; quite judiciously, for the temptation 
would fail. 

A reflective reader will perceive his mind fixed in a won- 
derful sameness of feeling throughout a whole volume : it is 
hardly relieved a moment, by surprise, delight, or labour, and 
at length becomes very tiresome ; perhaps a little analogous 
to the sensations of a Hindoo while fulfilling his vow, to re- 
main in one certain posture for a month. A sedate formality 
of manner is invariably kept up through a thousand pages, 
without the smallest danger of ever luxuriating into a beauti- 
ful irregularity. We never find ourselves in the midst of any 
thing that reminds us of nature, except by that orderly stiff- 
ness which she forswears ; or of freedom, except by being 
compelled to go in the measured paces of a dull procession. 
If we manfully persist in reading on, we at length feel a tor- 
por invading our faculties, we become apprehensive that some 
w^izard is about turning us into stones, and we can break the 
spell only by shutting the book. Having shut the book, we 
feel that w^e have acquired no definable addition to our ideas ; 
we have little more than the consciousness of having passed 
along through a very regular series of sentences and unex- 
ceptionable propositions ; much in the same manner as, per- 
haps, at another hour of the same day, we have the con- 
sciousness or remembrance of having just passed along by a 
very regular painted palisade, no one bar of wdiich particu- 
larly fixed our attention, and the whole of which we shall 
soon forget that we have ever seen. 

The last fault that we shall allege, is some defect on the 
ground of religion ; not a deficiency of general seriousness, 
nor an infrequency of reference to the most solemn subjects, 
nor an omission of stating sometimes, in explicit terms, the 
leading principles of the theory of the Christian redemption. 
But we repeatedly find cause to complain that, in other parts 
of the sermon, he appears to forget these statements, and ad- 
vances propositions which, unless the reader shall combine 
with them modifications which the author has not suggested, 
must contradict the principles. On occasions, he clearly de- 
duces from the death and atonement of Christ the hopes of 
futurity, and consolations against the fear of death ; and then, 
at other times, he seems most cautious to avoid this grand 



282 * LIFE OF BLAIE. 

topic, when adverting to the approach of death, and the feel- 
ings of that season ; and seems to rest all the consolations on 
the review of a virtuous life. We have sometimes to charge 
him also with a certain adulteration of the Christian moral 
principles, by the admixture of a portion of the worldly spirit. 
As a friend to Christianity, he wished her to be a little less 
harsh and peculiar than in her earlier days, and to show that 
she had not lived so long in the genteelest world in the crea- 
tion, without learning politeness. Especially it was neces- 
sary for her to exercise due complaisance when she attended 
him^ if she felt any concern about his reputation, as a com- 
panion of the fashionable, the sceptical, the learned, and the 
affluent, and a preacher to the most splendid congregation in 
the whole country. It would seem that she meekly took these 
delicate hints, and adopted a language Avhich no gentleman 
could be ashamed to repeat, or offended to hear. The ser- 
mons abound with specimens of this improved dialect, but we 
cannot be supposed to have room here for quotations ; we will 
only transcribe a single short sentence from the Sermon on 
Death : " Wherever religion, virtue, or true honour call him 
forth to danger, life ought to be hazarded without fear." Now 
what is the meaning of the word " honour," evidently here 
employed to denote something distinct from virtue, and there- 
fore not cognizable by the laws of morality ? Does the 
reverend orator mean, that to gain fame or glory, as it is 
called, or to avert the imputation or suspicion of cowardice, 
or to maintain some trivial punctilio of precedence or arrogant 
demand of pride, commonly called a point of honour, between 
individuals or nations, or to abet, as a matter of course, any 
cause rendered honourable by being adopted by the higher 
classes of mankind, — a Christian ought to hazard his life ? 
— Taken as the ground of the most awful duty to which a 
human being can be called, and yet thus distinguished from 
religion and morality, what the term means can be nothing 
good. The preacher did not, perhaps, exactly know what he 
intended it to mean ; but it was a term in high vogue, and 
therefore well adapted to be put along with religion and virtue 
to qualify their uncouthness. It was no mean proof of ad- 
dress to have made these two surly puritans accept their 
sparkish companion. If this passage were one among only 
a few specimens of a dubious language, it would be scandal- 
ous in us to quote it in this particular manner ; but as there 



CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS SERMONS. 283 

are very many phrases cast after a similar model, we have a 
a right to cite it, as an instance of that tincture of the un- 
sound maxims of the world, which we have asserted to be 
often perceptible in these sermons. This might be all in its 
place in the sermons of the despicable Yorick ; but it is dis- 
gusting to hear a very grave divine blending, with Christian, 
exhortations, the loathsome slang of duelling lieutenants, of 
gamblers, of scoffers at religion, of consequential fools who 
believe their own reputation the most important thing on 
earth, and indeed that the earth has nothing else to attend to, 
and of men whose rant about perhaps the glory of dying for 
their country, is mixed with insults to the Almighty, and im- 
precations of perdition on their souls. 

This doubtful and accommodating quality was one of the 
chief causes, we apprehend, of the first extraordinary popu- 
larity of these sermons. A great many people of gayety, 
rank, and fashion, have occasionally a feeling that a little 
easy quantity of religion would be a good thing ; because it 
is too true, after all, that we cannot be staying in this world 
always, and when one goes out of it, why, there may be some 
hardish matters to settle in the other place. The prayer- 
book of a Sunday is a good deal to be sure toward making 
all safe, but then it is really so tiresome ; for penance it is 
very well, but to say one likes it, one cannot for the life of 
one. If there were some tolerable religious thing that one 
could read now and then without trouble, and think it about 
half as pleasant as a game of cards, it would be comfortable. 
One should not be so frightened about what we must all come 
to some time. — Now nothing could have been more to the 
purpose than these sermons ; they were welcomed as the 
very thing. They were unquestionably about religion, and 
grave enough in all conscience ; yet they were elegant ; 
they were so easy to comprehend throughout, that the mind 
was never detained a moment to think ; they were undefiled 
by methodisra ; they but little obtruded peculiar doctrinal no- 
tions ; they applied very much to high life, and the author 
was evidently a gentleman; the book could be discussed as a 
matter of taste, and its being seen in the parlour excited no 
surmise that any one in the house had been lately converted. 
Above all, it was most perfectly free from that disagreeable 
and mischievous property attributed to the eloquence of Peri- 
cles, that it " left stings behind." 



284 LIFE OF BLAIR* 

With these recommendations, aided by the author's repu* 
tation as an elegant critic, and by his acquaintance with per- 
sons of the highest note, the book became fashionable ; it was 
circulated that Lord Mansfield had read some of the sermons 
to their Majesties ; peers and peeresses without number were 
cited, as having read and admired ; till at last it was almost 
a mark of vulgarity not to have read them, and many a lie was 
told to escape this imputation, by persons who had not yet en- 
joyed the advantage. Grave elderly ministers of much severer 
religious views than Dr. Blair, were, in sincere benevolence, 
glad that a work had appeared, which gave a chance for re- 
ligion to make itself heard among the dissipated and the great, 
to whom ordinary sermons, and less polished treatises of 
piety, could never find access. Dainty young sprigs of the- 
ology, together with divers hopeful young men and maidens, 
were rejoiced to find that Christian tnith could be attired in a 
much nicer garb than that in which it was exhibited in Bever- 
idge, or in the Morning Exercises at Cripplegate. 

If the huzzas attending the triumphal entry of these sermons 
had not been quite so loud, the present silence concerning 
them might not have appeared quite so profound. And if 
there had been a little more vigour in the thought, and any 
thing like nature and ease in the language, they might have 
emerged again into a respectable and permanent share of pub- 
lic esteem. But, as the case stands, we think they are gone 
or going irrevocably to the vault of the Capulets. Such a 
deficiency of ratiocination, combined with such a total want 
of original conception, is in any book incompatible with its 
staying long in the land of the living. And, as to the style, 
also, of these performances, there were not wanting, even in 
the hey-day and riot of their popularity, some doctors, cunning 
in such matters, who thought the dead monotony of the ex- 
pression symptomatic of a disease that must end fatally. 

We should apologize to our readers for having gone on thus 
far with our remarks, without coming to the work which has 
given the occasion for introducing them. 

This volume has disappointed our expectation of finding a 
particular account of the life of Dr. Blair, enlivened with 
anecdotes illustrative of his character. Nearly half of it is 
occupied not in criticizing, but actually in epitomizing, the 
Doctor's writings, a labour of which it is impossible to com- 
prehend the necessity or use, except to make up a handsome- 



CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS SERMONS. 285 

looking volume. Several of the most noted of the sermons 
are individually dissected, in a tedious manner, and compared 
with several of the sermons on the same subjects, in the vol- 
umes of some of the celebrated French preachers, but with- 
out any critical remarks of consequence. The other half of 
the book does relate mainly to the man himself, but is Avrit- 
ten much more in the manner of a formal academical eulogy, 
than of any thing like a lively and simple memoir. It is not 
florid, but it is as set and artificial as the composition of Dr. 
Blair himself; and indeed seems a very good imitation, or, at 
least, resemblance. Except in the acknowledgment of one or 
two slight weaknesses, as we are taught to deem them, in the 
Doctor's character, it is a piece of laboured and unvaried pane- 
gyric, carried on from page to page, with a gravity which be- 
comes at length perfectly ludicrous. Hardly one circum- 
stance is told in the language of simple narrative ; every 
sentence is set to the task of applause. Even Dr. Blair him- 
self, whose vanity was extreme, would have been almost 
satisfied, if such an exhibition of his qualities and talents had 
been written in time to have been placed in his view. 

To avoid several pages of extracts, we must remark, that 
Dr. Blair was something of a beau, and very fond of novel 
reading. Every reader will be surprised and provoked to find 
so very small a share of personal history. It is well known 
that we are not in general to look for many incidents and ad- 
ventures in the life of a scholar and clergyman : but we should 
have supposed that a period of eighty-three years might have 
furnished more matters of fact, than what could be comprised 
in a quarter of that number of pages. Those which are here 
afforded, consist of little beside the notice and dates of the two 
or three more obscure preferments of Dr. Blair, on his road to 
what is descril)ed the summit of ecclesiastical success and 
honour, the High Church of Edinburgh ; his appointment as 
Professor of Belles Lettres ; his failure of being placed in 
the situation of Principal of the University of Edinburgh, 
M'hich he expected to receive from the pure gratitude and ad- 
miration of his country, without any solicitation ; and, the 
important circumstance of preaching his last sermon. This 
circumstance, will be henceforAvard inserted, Ave trust, Avith 
its precise date, in all chronicles of the memorable things of 
past times ; for it is enlarged on here, as if it had been one of 
the most momentous events of the century. He died De- 
13* 



286 LIFE OF BLAIR. 

cember 27th, 1800, in the eighty-third year of his age, and 
the fifty-ninth of his ministry. 

The Doctor's successful progress through life was on the 
whole adapted to gratify, one should think almost to satiety, 
that love of fame which his biographer declares, in so many 
words, to have been his ruling passion ; nor had the passion 
which. Dr. Hill does not say, was second in command, the love 
of money, any great cause to complain. 

We sincerely wish to persuade ourselves that, with all his 
labour of encomium, this Dr. Hill has done less than justice to 
his subject. For if we are to take his representation as ac- 
curate and complete, we have the melancholy spectacle of a 
preacher of religion, whose grand and uniform object in all 
his labours was advancement in the world. This is clearly 
the only view in which his admiring friend contemplates those 
labours. The preacher's success is constantly dwelt on with 
delight ; but this success always refers to himself, and his own 
worldly interests, not to any religious influence exerted on the 
minds of his inferior, and afterwards, his splendid, auditories. 
His evangelical office is regarded as merely a professional 
thing, in which it was his happiness to surpass his competi- 
tors, to attain the highest reputation, to be placed in a con- 
spicuous station, to obtain a comparative affluence, to be most 
sumptuously flattered by the great, and to be the intimate 
friend of Hume, Smith, Home, Ferguson, and Robertson, 
There is hardly a word that attributes to the admired preacher 
any concern about promoting the Christian cause, the king- 
dom of Christ, or the conversion of wicked men, — in short, 
any one of those sublime objects for which alone the first 
magnanimous promulgators of Christianity preached, and 
laboured, and suflered. It is easy to see that, though Dr. 
Blair's reputed eloquence had been made the means of im- 
parting the light, and sanctity, and felicity, of religion, to ten 
thousand poor wicked peasants, yet if he had not sought and 
acquired high distinction in polished society, his learned 
biographer would have been utterly disinclined to celebrate 
him, as deeming him either a grovelling spirit, incapable of 
aiming at a high object, or the victim of malignant stars that 
forbade him to attain it. We could make plenty of citations 
to acquit ourselves of injustice in this representation : there 
arc many passages of a quality similar to the following : — 
*' Hie Lordsliip," (Chief Baron Orde,) " in hie official capacity, was a 



CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS SERMONS. 287 

regular hearer of the Doctor's sermons, while his court sat, and there was 
no one better qualified to judge of the preacher's merit. This merit, too, 
was never more conspicuous than when it was honoured with the appro- 
bation of the venerable Judge. Dr. Blair's literary reputation was there 
thoroughly established. And the unwearied labour he underwent in his 
closet, while composing his sermons, was repaid by the admhation of a 
discerning audience." — P. 187. 

The Doctor is commonly reputed to have had a tolerably 
sufficient attachment to pelf. He might have higher motives 
for clinging so fast to the patronage of Lord Melville, but it is 
irksome to hear of his being " so much indebted to that pa- 
tron's munificence," with the addition of the fulsome cant 
that, " every favour which he received (from this patron) was 
multa dantis cum laude, and did honour to the hand that be- 
stowed it. This patron is presumed to have been at the bot- 
tom of the pension of £200 granted from the public treasury. 

In reading so many things a-bout patronage, and munifi- 
cence, and protection, and advancement, and success, it can- 
not fail to occur to any reader of sense to ask, with a senti- 
ment very indignant in one reference, or very compassionate 
in the other — If all this was necessary to Dr. Blair, with a 
very small family, and with all the internal means attributed 
to him of advancing his interests, what is to become of ever 
so many hundred hapless clergymen, in Scotland and else- 
where, who have large families, slender livings, and no 
General Frazers, Chief Barons, and Lord Melvilles to " pro- 
tect " them, no means of getting into the High Church of Ed- 
inburgh, no chance of attracting the notice of Royalty, and a 
pension of £200, and no hope of collecting tribute by means 
of a literary reputation "extending beyond the bounds of the 
British empire ?" 



288 RITCHIE S LIFE OF HUME. 

XIIL 

DAVID HUME 



Account of the Life and Writings of David Hume, Esq. 
By Thomas Edwakd Ritchie. 

This is by no means so ample a memoir as the number of 
pages would seem to indicate. The last eighty pages are 
occupied with Hume's publication in French, relative to the 
affair Avith Rousseau ; a translation of this pamphlet is in- 
serted in the narrative, accompanied by several additional let- 
ters on the same business, and engrossing more than a hun- 
dred pages ; and about one hundred and thirty pages are 
filled with criticism on Hume's writings, eight pages that were 
printed in the first edition of his " Essays," but in the later 
ones omitted by the author, and a critique on Wilkie's " Epi- 
goniad," sent by Hume to the " Critical Review." Much 
less than half the book, therefore, is occupied with what is 
strictly biographical, even if we include a considerable num- 
ber of his letters to some of his distinguished friends, espe- 
cially Dr. Robertson. In so much of the volume as we owe to 
the pen of Mr. Ritchie, we do not find occasion for any great 
measure of either praise or blame. It is written with per- 
spicuity, in a style not clumsy, but not remarkable for ele- 
gance. The detail of the iew events of Hume's life would be 
sufficiently orderly, if there appeared less eagerness to seize 
and dilate every circumstance that can be introduced as an 
episode. A character of sense and independence is visible 
throughout ; and the present is one of the very few biogra- 
phers who are free from the weakness of enthusiastically ad- 
miring, or the h} pocrisy of affecting so to admire, the mixed 
and imperfect subject of their pages. If he could have brought 
himself to the obsequiousness of promising to laud his subject 
up to the pitch of eulogy which would have gratified the deli- 
cate cars of Hume's living relations, he might have been ena- 



RITCHIE S LIFE OF HUME. 289 

bled to supply a great deficiency of information respecting the 
early years and habits of the philosopher ; but we are com- 
pelled to approve the independent conduct described in the 
note at page 4. 

♦* In the hope of being enabled to fill up any chasm in this narrative, I 
applied to a near relation of Mr. Hume, and was told, that if the work was 
to advance his fame, and a copy of the manuscript furnished to the family, 
the information wanted would, perhaps, be supplied. With such condi- 
tions I refused compliance, choosing rather to remain satisfied with the 
little I had otherwise obtained, than to fetter my sentiments, and subject 
myself to so laborious a task, in return for what was probably of little im- 
portance." 

In the narrative part, great use is necessarily made of 
Hume's own memoir, called " My Own Life," with the addi- 
tion of Dr. Smith's details of the circumstances which preced- 
ed the exit. This is followed by a general estimate of Hume, 
as a metaphysician, a moralist, a writer on general policy, 
and a historian. It is a brief review of all his writings, and 
evinces a good share of acuteness and knowledge. The last 
eighteen pages of this review are filled with a curious collec- 
tion of sentences from the " History of England," as they 
stand corrected in the later editions, compared with the same 
sentences of the first edition, which are placed in an opposite 
column, with here and there a suggestion from Mr. Ritchie of 
still further corrections, wanted in some of these sentences. 
It would not seem that Mr. Hume's composition can pretend 
to high merit on the ground of correctness. 

It is not the biographer's fault that Hume's life furnishes 
but a singularly meagre and uninteresting detail. It is cu- 
rious to think how many thousands of his contemporaries 
whose names are forgotten, would have supplied each a far 
more animated and entertaining narrative. The story of ma- 
ny a common soldier or sailor, many a highwayman, many a 
gipsy, many a deserted child, and many a beggar, would have 
kept awake the attention which is much inclined to slumber 
over an account of this celebrated philosopher. — He was born 
at Edinburgh in ITll. There was some undefined quantity 
of nobility in the blood of his ancestors on both sides, and 
therefore we suppose in his own, of which he is said to have 
been always extremely vain. We are told, "the juvenile 
years of Hume were not marked by any thing which can at- 
tract our notice. His father died while our historian was an 



2 90 

infant, and left the care of him, his elder brother Joseph, and 
sister Catharine, to their mother, who, although in the bloom 
of life, devoted herself to the education of her children with 
laudable assiduity." He went to school and to college, was 
designed by his friends for the law, but was often guilty of sli- 
ly stealing from the lectures of his venerable tutors, Voet and 
Vinnius, into the much more dashing company of Cicero and 
Virgil. These gentlemen had certainly taken care to make 
their own fortunes, in their day ; but their harangues and 
hexameters were of so little service to that of their admirer, 
which had no broader basis than the patrimony of a Scottish 
younger brother, that he determined to enter on some com- 
mercial pursuit. He therefore left the citizens of Rome, and 
went to try his skill among those of Bristol ; but finding him- 
self after a few months, totally unequal to the bustle incident 
to a mercantile situation, he abandoned the attempt, and went 
to France. Thence he returned to London in 1737, and, in 
the following year, published his " Treatise of Human Na- 
ture." 

Under the profession of shoAving what qualifications are re- 
quisite for the satisfactory performance of such a work as this 
pretends to be, Mr. Ritchie has given a sketch of the history 
of philosophy, or rather a catalogue of philosophers, from Pla- 
to to Hume. But we do not exactly comprehend the design oi 
this, unless he means to be understood, that to be able to in- 
dite a philosophical treatise on human nature, the writer must 
have studied all that has ever been written, by all the philo- 
sophers of ancient and modern times. We could certainly 
wish that Hume had deemed this an indispensable prerequi- 
site to the privilege of writing and vending his own sceptical 
cogitations ; but it is too evident that none of the infidel phi- 
losophers have ever had the conscience to acknowledge the 
obligation of this preliminary duty. This enumeration of dis- 
tinguished names ends with a real curiosity, a list of about a 
sixth part, as the author believes, of " the commentators and 
scholiasts on Aristotle's philosophical works," which accumu- 
lates the titles of books containing, in all, a quanity of writing 
which would have amounted to several hundred quarto vo- 
lumes. 

It is well known, from Hume's own acknowledgment, that 
ihis his first performance was utterly neglected by the public. 
In making the acknowledgment, he praises the equanimity 



RITCHIE S LIFE OF HUME. 291 

which he maintained on the occasion, and the facility with 
which his cheerful and sanguine temper returned to the habit 
of animation and hope. Mr. Ritchie has in his text consented 
to say the same thing, but has subjoined a note which gives an- 
other representation of the philosopher's patience and tranquil- 
lity. 

*' In the « London Review,' Vol. V. p. 280, (anno 1777,) edited by Dr. 
Kenrick, there is a note on this passage in our author's biograpliical nar- 
rative, rather inimical to the amenity of disposition claimed by him. The 
reviewer says, — ' so sanguine, that it does not appear our author had ac- 
quired, at tliis period of his life, that command over his passions of which 
he afterwards makes his boast. His disappointment at the public recep- 
tion of his ' Essay on Human Nature,' had indeed a violent effect on his 
passions in a particular instance; it not having dropped so dead.horn from 
the press, but that it was severely handled by the reviewers of those times, 
in a publication entitled. The Works of the Learned ; a circumstance 
which so highly provoked our young philosopher, that he flew in a violent 
rage to demand satisfaction of Jacob Robinson, the publisher, whom he 
kept, during the paroxysm of his anger at the sword's point, trembling be- 
hind the counter, lest a period should be put to the life of a sober critic, by 
a raving philosopher.' " 

The repugnance of mankind to receive instruction should 
not deter an enlightened and benevolent man who may have 
failed in the first effort, from soliciting their attention again, 
and holding up salutary truths afresh to their view. Mr. 
Hume displayed in a high degree this generous perseverance. 
Having endeavoured to explain to an ungrateful and indocile 
nation, that there is a wonderflil difference between impres- 
sions and ideas ; that there is no such connexion between 
causes and effects, as to support any argument in defence of 
religion or for the being of a God ; that no man can admit the 
truth of the Christian religion but by a miracle taking place 
in his mind at every moment ; that the Deity, if there be any 
such thing, is just so great as his actual visible works indicate, 
and no greater ; together with various other precious and pi- 
ous doctrines ; it had been a desertion of the great cause of 
truth and utility to have let these discoveries sink in silence, 
merely because the public had paid but little attention to them 
on their first or second promulgation. They might be receiv- 
ed again with the same indifference ; but whether men would 
hear or whether they would forbear, the philosopher was re- 
solved the truth should be testified to them once more. After 
a few years, the substance of the " Treatise on Human Na- 



292 

tiire " was new-modelled and republished, with greater matu- 
rity of reasoning, in his " Inquiry concerning the Human Un- 
derstanding," and his " Inquiry concerning the Principles of 
Morals." These works, however, experienced the same neg- 
lect as the first. The grief of the disinterested reformer of 
the judgments and morals of men may well be imagined to 
have been extreme, at this repeated proof of their perverse- 
ness and hardness of heart ; a grief so purely benevolent, that 
it could be but imperfectly consoled by the reflection, that he 
had at least performed his own part, and acquitted himself of 
all the guilt. In regard to such a case, one is anxious to be- 
lieve, if one could, that really virtue is its own reward. If it 
be not so, there could be few spectacles more pitiable than 
that of a philosophical philanthropist, like Mr. Hume, toiling 
without any success as to the immediate object, and without 
any hope of a life after death to reward him amidst a happy 
rest from his labours. His generous distress was not, however, 
doomed to be altogether without mitigation. About the same 
period of his life at which the two " Inquiries " ineffectually 
tried to obtain attention, he published some of his " Essays," 
which, finding a more favourable reception, relieved in some 
measure the forlornness of his literary prospects, and gave a 
fresh stimulus to that indefatigable application to study, which 
even his disappointments had scarcely been sufficient to relax. 

There are various expressions in this and other parts of the 
volume, pretty plainly indicating Mr. Ritchie's own disposi- 
tions towards religion. His condemnation of these proceed- 
ings against infidelity does not appear to arise, in any degree, 
from a concern for the cause of religion, which he might think 
this an injudicious and injurious mode of defending, but from 
a contempt of the zeal which could think it worth while to 
take any interest about religion at all, or in any way to make 
a strenuous effort in its defence. Nor is it apparently his anx- 
iety for the endangered liberty of the press, that prompts the 
indignation, but really a friendly sympathy Avith the cause of 
deism, and with Hume considered in the character of its advo- 
cate and apostle, to whose writings possibly the biographer 
feels indebted and grateful for some part of his freedom from 
prejudice and superstition. 

But, while we cannot entertain the smallest respect for the 
motive of our author's censure of these proceedings, we disap- 
prove, as much as he can do, the exertion of temporal force, 



Ritchie's life of hume. 293 

whether in an ecclesiastical or purely secular form, or any 
proceedings tending to this exertion, against the propagators 
ot* erroneous speculations. We disapprove it for the obvious 
reasons which have been repeated innumerable times. 

1. The exertion of force for the suppression or punishment 
of error, proceeds on a principle which is itself the most impi- 
ous of all errors ; it assumes the infallibility of the power that 
makes it. 

2. Though the poAver, whether an individual or a corpora- 
tion of persons, exercising such authority, icere an infallible 
judge of truth, there can be no proof derived from the Christian 
institutes, that the Governor of the world has invested the 
temporal authority with any right of interference or punish- 
ment, one step beyond the offences which immediately violate 
the good order of the body politic. But the most absolute proof 
from this source is required, since nothing can be more dan- 
gerous and wicked, than to hazard an encroachment on the 
peculiar and exclusive province of the divine jurisdiction. 

3. As this exercise of power is not authorized by Christian- 
ity, so neither can it be justified by any practical experience 
of its being adapted to produce its intended effect. The ex- 
perience of ages testifies its inefficacy. The reaction of the 
human mind, against what has been felt as persecution, has 
commonly produced a more obstinate adherence to the obnox- 
ious opinions, Avhich have thenceforth been propagated Avith 
more daring zeal, or with more sedulous cunning, so that their 
extermination could be efiected only by exterminating their 
believers. 

4. If this power is to be exercised at all, there are no defin- 
able limits to its exercise, since there can be no indisputable 
rules for deciding what error is too small, or what punishment 
is too great. It will be impossible to ascertain the propor- 
tions of turpitude and pernicious tendency in the various forms 
and degrees of error ; and among the adherents to any given 
system of opinions, there will not be Avanting some Avho can 
foresee the most dreadful consequences necessarily resulting 
from the rejection of even the minutest of its articles, and Avho 
therefore, if iuA^ested Avith poAver, and unrestrained by policy, 
Avould enact fines, imprisonment, exile, or death, against the 
slightest deviation from the appointed creed. 

5. If Ave could even admit the possibility of such an exer- 
cise of human poAver being just in the abstract, it is impossi- 



294 Ritchie's life of hume. 

ble to find or imagine any man, or corporation of men, so sul3- 
limely virtuous as to exercise it with an exclusive disinterest- 
ed regard to its object. In all cases that ever yet occurred, 
worldly advantage, or the spirit of party, or some other mean 
principle, has mingled in those proceedings of temporal pow- 
er, against heretics and unbelievers, which have been profes- 
sedly dictated by a pure love of truth. 

Lastly, it seems no less than a virtual rejection of religion, 
to admit that its evidence is not such as to support it, without 
the assistance of a provision to inflict temporal pains and pe- 
nalties on its adversaries and deserters. 

In these observations we have used the word temporal power, 
notwithstanding that the proceedings meditated against Hume 
were of an ecclesiastical nature. It is scarcely necessary to 
observe, that wherever the church is formally supported as a 
corporate body by the authority, and as the constituent part, of 
the state, it has the power of the state in all its institutions and 
proceedings, and can either inflict punishment by a process of 
its own, or consign the offender over to the civil magistrate. 
If the excommunication which would have followed the success 
of the proposed measure against Hume andKames, had amount- 
ed to no more than purely an ecclesiastical anathema, the ex- 
pression merely of the opinion of the clerical body, they would 
have laughed at the church and all its assemblies and debates ; 
but as the case stood, they both felt no little anxiety ; for, as 
Mr. Ritchie observes, " when their adversaries were armed 
with a sentence of excommunication, they had it in their power 
to institute a criminal process in the ordinary courts of justice. 
Similar measures of severity had not unfrequently been resorted 
to in England, where Woolston had not only been exalted to 
the pillory, but bore on his person manifest evidence of the 
humane and tolerant spirit of a national clergy." (P. 70). All 
men of liberal minds rejoice that these methods of refuting and 
restraining infidelity have long since become obsolete. For 
some years past our government and clergy have had the wis- 
dom to consign the question, in all its parts, to the pure juris- 
diction of reason ; and the writings of our Christian advocates 
have shown how safely the sacred cause may be left \vithout 
any other aid, except the influence of Heaven. Reviewing the 
actions of past ages, we may exult in it as a grand attainment 
of the human mind, and a noble distinction of the present 
times, that men are become persuaded religion possesses 



Ritchie's life of hume. 295 

within itself the means of its triumph, and is of too lofty a spirit 
to accept any obligations from magistrates, pillories, and pri- 
sons. 

These discussions in the ecclesiastical courts somewhat con- 
tributed to bring into notice the portion of the " History of 
England" which Hume published about this time. For a num- 
ber of years, however, the sale was slow, and the slender share 
of reputation most mortifying to his ruling passion. With the 
exception of two or three tracts, he had not even the consola- 
tion of exciting literary hostility, M^hich would have been be- 
yond all comparison more gratifying to him than this silent and 
inglorious toleration. He pretends indeed, in his memoir of 
his own life, that some parts of the history did excite a violent 
clamour ; but this story seems to have been of the same accu- 
racy as that of the redoubtable Falstaft', when he swore he had 
been set upon by some fifty ruffians at least ; for the biographer, 
*' after a diligent search into the literary histories of that period, 
has been unable to discover any of that outcry which assailed 
the sensitive ears of Mr. Hume. In later times, indeed, his 
accuracy, impartiality, and political tenets have been attacked, 
and with justice, but without any clamour, and seldom with 
illiberality." P. 106. 

Many pages are occupied with a history of the successive 
literary societies in Scotland, the Rankenian Club, the Poker 
Club, the Select Society, the Philosophical Society, and the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh, of several of which Hume was a 
member, together with the most eminent of his contempora- 
ries. It is justly asserted that these associations greatly con- 
tributed, beside their effect on the individuals composing them, 
to promote in Scotland a literary taste, a refinement of compo- 
sition, and a bold and comprehensive speculation. 

A kind of amicable rivalry in historical composition, con- 
firmed the habits of intimate communication between Hume 
and Robertson ; the greater number of the letters of Hume 
which are published, or rather re-published in this volume, 
(for many of them have been printed before,) are addressed to 
his brother historian. Both these and his other letters are in 
general excellent specimens of an easy diction, unaffected good 
sense, politeness, and sometimes delicate pleasantry. 

Hume enjoyed the high advantage over his accomplished 
friend, of residing, at several times, a number of years in 
France and Italy, as well as of spending considerable portions 



296 Ritchie's life op hume. 

of time in the English metropolis. From this citizenship of 
the world, he necessarily acquired a considerable degree of 
freedom from local prejudices, tastes, and dialect, an ampler 
collection of facts for an inductive estimate of human nature, 
and a richer store of images, supplied by so many views of 
nature and art, for giving life, colour, and variety, to the pic- 
tures and narrations of history. And yet it is almost wonder- 
ful that, in point of fact, he so little, after all, excelled in these 
respects his untravelled rival. If it be admitted that Hume 
has the advantage in shrewdness of minute discrimination, yet 
we believe it is felt by sensible readers, that Robertson is quite 
as much a master of general principles, that he gives a still 
greater prominence to important facts, and that, in the art of 
infusing into the scenes a moral interest, which shall command 
the passions, he far surpasses his frigid contemporary ; in short, 
that history, under the management of Robertson, is less a 
scene of the dead, than under that of Hume. The style also of 
the former is almost as exempt from nationality of phrase as 
that of the latter. 

In quality of Secretary to the British ambassador, Hume 
visited Vienna and Turin, and about the age of fifty was em- 
ployed as charge d'affaires at Paris. It was at this time that 
he became involved in the well-known aftair with Rousseau, 
which has more of the character of an adventure than any other 
circumstance of his life, and of which the story and documents, 
in French and English, fill almost half the present volume. 
Our philosopher invited Rousseau to take refuge in England, 
from the danger which threatened him in France on account 
of his Emilius, which had given oftence to the Ecclesiastical 
order. Rousseau availed himself of the invitation ; and Hume 
really appears to have taken extraordinary pains, with extraor- 
dinary patience, to place him in an agreeable situation, which 
w^as at last etlected in Derbyshire. For a short time, the ex- 
pressions of gratitude and admiration were raised to a style of 
fulsome excess. But very soon the morbid mind of Rousseau 
began to conceive dark suspicions, that his pretended benefac- 
tor was only a wicked and traitorous agent of that grand con- 
spiracy, which it was now most evident that all mankind had 
taken the trouble to enter into, against his peace, his fame, and 
even his personal safety. The circumstances which excited 
the suspicion, and soon confirmed it into an invincible persua- 
sion, were more trivial than even those from which dramatists 



Ritchie's life of hume. 297 

have represented the commencement and progress of mistaken 
jealousy. A more amusing- exhibition was perhaps never 
made, of the servility of a strong understanding to a wretched 
temperament, than that afibrded by a number of letters of 
Rousseau, and especially by one of great length, describing 
the whole progress of his feelings, and replete with virulence, 
eloquence, and perverse ingenuity. The reader at this time 
may be entertained l)y the quarrel without caring which of 
them was in the wrong, though his censure will inevitably fall 
on the citizen of Geneva. The dispute was well worth perus- 
ing, for the sake of the contrast between the men ; for the 
w^orld will probably never see again such an instance of the 
two extremes of the philosophic character brought in contact. 
We could amuse ourselves by compounding, in imagination, 
these two elements in equal proportions, or with various de- 
grees of the predominance of either. It may be worth while 
for any one who proposes to set up for a philosopher, to do 
this, in order to tind the standard to which it may be prudent 
to conform himself. About an equal mixture of them would 
make a man whom all would be constrained to admire ; but 
no mixture would constitute one whom a good man could ap- 
prove or revere. Even if the history of the w^orld did not sup- 
ply a far nobler class of human beings, to be placed in con- 
trast with such as the persons in question, or as any imagina- 
ble combination of the two characters, it would still be evident, 
that men most religiously devoted to the pursuit of fame, 
that is, idolatry of self, devoid of any pure, unmingled wish to 
do good, and neglectful or contemptuous of the authority of the 
Supreme Spirit, are creatures of a very degraded order, mere 
terrcB JiUi, notwithstanding the sagacity which can illustrate 
the records of time, or unfold the nature of man, notwithstand- 
ing the originality which can invent new systems, or the elo- 
quence which can adorn them. 

The account of the closing part of Hume's life has long 
been very w^ell known to the public ; but we are inclined to 
print it once more, as exhibiting what would probably be ad- 
mitted, and even cited, by infidels, as an example of the 
noblest and most magnanimous deportment in the prospect of 
death, that it is possible for any of their class to maintain ; an 
example indeed which very few of them ever, in their serious 
moments, dare promise themselves to equal, though they may, 
like Mr. Ritchie, deem it in the highest degree enviable. It 



298 

may be taken as quite their apostolic specimen, standing par- 
allel in their history to the instance of St. Paul in the records 
of the Christians, " I have fought a good fight," &c. Mr. 
Hume had visited Bath, but was returning to Scotland, under 
an increase of his fatal malady. At this period, however, 

•' His cheerfulness never forsook him. He wrote letters to his literary 
friends, mforming them of his intention to be at Edinburgh on a certain 
day, and inviting them to dine with him on the day following. It was a 
kind of farewell dinner : and among those who came to partake of the 
hospitality uf the dying historian, were Lord Elibank, Dr. Smith, Dr. 
Blair, Dr. Black, Professor Ferguson, and John Home. 

" At his return to Edinburgh, Mr. Hume, though extremely debilitated 
by disease, went abroad at times in a sedan chair, and called on his 
friends ; but his ghastly looks intimated the rapid approach of death. He 
diverted himself with correcting his works for a new editi(m, with reading 
books of amusement, with the conversation of his friends, and sometimes 
in the evening with a party at his favourite game of whist. His faceti- 
ousness led him to indulge occasionally in the bagatelle. Among other 
verbal legacies, in making which he amused himself, the f(jllowmg whim- 
sical one has been related. The author of Douglas is said to have a mor- 
tal aversion to port wine, and to have had frequent disputes with the his- 
torian about the manner of spelling his name. Both these circumstances 
were often the subject of Mr. Hume's raillery ; and he verbally bequeath- 
ed to the poet a quantity of port wine, on condition that he should always 
drink a bottle at a sitting, and give a receipt for it under the signature of 
John Hume. 

" Dr. Smith has recorded an instance of Mr. Hume's sportive disposi- 
tion ; and it also shows the placidity of his mind, notwithstanding the 
prospect of speedy dissolution. Colonel Edmonstone came to take leave 
of him ; and, on his way heme, he could not forbear writing Hume a let- 
ter, bidding him once more an eternal adieu, and applying to him the 
French verses in which the Abbe Chaulieu, in expectation of his own 
death, laments his approaching separation from his friend the Marquis de 
la Fare. Dr. Smith happened to enter the room while Mr. Hume was 
reading the letter ; and in the course of the conversation it gave rise to, 
Mr. Hume expressed the satisfaction he had in leaving his friends, and 
his brother's family in particular, in prosperous circumstances. This, he 
said, he felt so sensibly, that when he was reading, a few days before, 
Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, he could not, among all the excuses 
which are alleged to Charon for not entermg readily into his boat, find 
one that fitted him. He had no house to finish ; he had no daughter to 
provide for ; he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge him- 
self. ' I could not well imagine,' said he, ' what excuse I could make to 
Charon, in order to obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of 
consequence which I ever meant to do. I could at no time expect to 
leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which 
I am now likely to leave them ; I therefore have all reason to die con- 
tented.' 

" ' He then diverted himself,' continues Dr. Smith, ♦ with inventing 
several jocular excuses, which he supposed he might make to Charon, and 



299 

in imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of 
Charon to return to them,' ' Upon further consideration,' said he, ' I 
thought I might say to him, Good Charon, I have been correcting my 
works for a new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the 
public receives the alterations. But Charon would answer. When you 
see the effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There 
will be no end of such excuses ; so, honest friend, please step into the 
boat. But I might still urge, Have a little patience, good Charon : I 
have been endeavouring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few 
3^ears longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some 
of the prevailing systems of superstition. But Charon would then lose 
all temper and decency : You loitering rogue, that will not happen these 
many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long 
a term ? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering rogue.' 

" The hour of his departure had now arrived. His decline being grad- 
ual, he was, in his last moments, perfectly sensible, and free from pain. 
He showed not the slightest indication of impatience or fretfulness, but 
conversed with the people around him in a tone of mildness and affec- 
tion; and his whole conduct evinced a happy composure of mind. On 
Sunday, the 25th of August, 1776, about four o'clock in the afternoon, 
this great and amiable man expired." — Pp. 298 — 301. 

On this most remarkable exhibition we think there was 
room for the biographer to have made several observations — 

First, supposing a certainty of the final cessation of con- 
scious existence at death, this indifference to lif ', if it was 
not affected (which indeed we suspect it to have been in part) 
was an absurd undervaluation of a possession which almost 
all rational creatures, that have not been extremely miserable, 
have held most dear, and which is in its own nature most pre- 
cious. To be a conscious agent, exerting a rich combination 
of wonderful faculties, to feel an infinite variety of pleasurable 
sensations and emotions, to contemplate all nature, to extend 
an intellectual presence to indefinite ages of the past and future, 
to possess a perennial spring of ideas, to run infinite lengths 
of inquiry, with the delight of exercise and fleetness, even 
when not with the satisfaction of full attainment, and to be a 
lord over inanimate matter, compelling it to an action and a 
use altogether foreign to its nature, — to be all this, is a state 
so stupendously different from that of being simply a piece of 
clay, that to be quite easy and complacent in the immediate 
prospect of passing from the one to the other, is a total inver- 
sion of all reasonable estimates of things ; it is a renunciation, 
we do not say of sound philosophy, but of common sense. The 
certainty that the loss will not be felt after it has taken place, 
will but little soothe a man of unperverted mind in considering 
what it is that he is going to lose. 



300 eitchie's life of hume. 

2. The jocularity of the philosopher was contrary to good 
taste. Supposing that the expected loss were not^ according 
to a grand law ot" nature, a cause for melancholy and despera- 
tion, but that the contentment were rational ; yet the ap- 
proaching transformation was at all events to be regarded as 
a very grave and very strange event, and therefore jocularity 
was totally incongruous with the anticipation of such an event : 
a grave and solemn feeling was the only one that could be in 
unison with the contemplation of such a change. There was, 
in this instance, the same incongruity which we should impute 
to a writer who should mingle butibonery in a solemn crisis 
of the drama, or with the most momentous event of a history. 
To be in harmony with his situation, in his own view of that 
situation, the expressions of the dying philosopher were re- 
quired to be dignified ; and if they were in any degree vivacious, 
the vivacity ought to have been rendered graceful by Ijeing ac- 
companied with the noblest effort of the intellect of which the 
efforts were going to cease for ever. The low vivacity of which 
%ve have been reading, seems but like the quickening corruption 
of a mind whose faculty of perception is putrefying and dis- 
solving even before the body. It is true that good men, of a 
high order, have been known to utter pleasantries in their 
last hours. But these have been pleasantries of a fine ethereal 
quality, the scintillations of animated hope, the high pulsa- 
tions of mental health, the involuntary movements of a spirit 
feeling itself free even in the grasp of death, the natural springs 
and boundings of faculties on the point of obtaining a still 
much greater and a boundless liberty. These had no resem- 
blance to the low and laboured jokes of our philosopher ; jokes 
so laboured as to give strong cause for suspicion, after all, 
that they were of the same nature, and for the same purpose, 
as the expedient of a boy on passing through some gloomy 
place in the night, who whistles to lessen his fear, or to per- 
suade his companion that he does not feel it. 

3. Such a manner of meeting death was inconsistent with 
the scepticism, to which Hume was always found to avow his 
adherence. For that scepticism necessarily acknowledged a 
possibility and a chance that the religion which he had scorned, 
might, notwithstanding, be found true, and might, in the mo- 
ment after his death, glare upon him with all its terrors. But 
how dreadful to a reflecting mind would have been the smallest 
chance of meeting such a vision ! Yet the philosopher could 



^^ Ritchie's life of hume. 301 

be cracking his heavy jokes, and Dr. Smith could be much 
diverted at the sport. 

4. To a man who solemnly believes the truth of revelation, 
and therefore the threatenings of divine vengeance against the 
despisers of it, this scene will present as mournful a spectacle 
as perhaps the sun ever shone upon. We have beheld a man 
of great talents and invincible perseverance, entering on his 
career with the profession of an impartial inquiry after truth, 
met at every stage and step by the evidences and expostula- 
tions of religion and the claims of his Creator, but devoting 
his labours to the pursuit of fame and the promotion of impiety, 
at length acquiring and accomplishing, as he declared himself, 
all he had intended and desired, and descending toward the 
close of life amidst tranquillity, widely-extending reputation, 
and the homage of the great and the learned. We behold him 
appointed soon to appear before that Judge to whom he had 
never alluded but with malice or contempt ; yet preserving to 
appearance an entire self-complacency, idly jesting about his 
approaching dissolution, and mingling with the insane sport 
his references to the fall of " superstition," a term of which 
the meaning is hardly ever dubious when expressed by such 
men. We behold him at last carried off, and we seem to hear, 
the following moment, from the darkness in which he vanishes, 
the shriek of surprise and terror, and the overpowering accents 
of the messenger of vengeance. On the whole globe there pro- 
bably was not acting, at the time, so mournful a tragedy as 
that of which the friends of Hume were the spectators, without 
being aware that it was any tragedy at all. 

If that barbarous old Charon would have permitted a cen- 
tury or two more of life, it is probable that Hume would have 
been severely mortified in viewing the effect of his writings 
against "superstition," an effect so much less than his vanity 
no doubt secretly anticipated. Indeed, his strictly philoso- 
phical works seem likely to fall into utter neglect. The 
biographer justly observes, that, though very acute, they are 
not very lucid or systematic in point of reasoning ; and they 
have none of that eloquence, which sometimes continues to 
interest the general reader in works that are becoming super- 
annuated in the schools of philosophy. Many of his shorter 
essays will always be read with much advantage ; but his 
History, we need not say, is the basis of his permanent re- 
putation ; and it will perpetuate the moral, as well as the 
14 



302 Ritchie's life of hume. 

intellectual cast of his mind ; it will show a man indiflerent 
to the welfare of mankind, contemptuous of the sublime feel- 
ings of moral and religious heroism, incapable himself of all 
grand and afiecting sentiments, and constantly cherishing a 
consummate arrogance, though often under the semblance and 
language of philosophic moderation. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 303 



XIV. 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, 



The Philosophy of Nature ; or, the Infiuemce of Scenery on the 
Mind and Heart, 

It may be asserted that there is a relation between the 
human mind and the whole known creation : in other words, 
that there are some principles of correspondence in the con- 
stitution of the mind, and in the constitutions of all known 
created things, such as some modes of inspiration, in conse- 
quence of which, those things are adapted to produce some 
efiect on the mind when they are presented to it, whether 
through the medium of the senses, or in any more immediately 
intellectual manner. It may be added, perhaps, that if the 
condition of the mind were absolutely and perfectly good, this 
effect would always be beneficial. 

As the mind must, in all periods and regions of its exist- 
ence, receive its happiness from causes exterior to itself, and 
as it is probable the one Supreme Cause of that happiness, 
the Deity, will make a very great part of the happiness which 
human spirits are to receive from him, come to them through 
the medium of his works, it is a matter of inexpressible ex- 
ultation, that those works are so stupendous in multiplicity 
and magnitude ; that they are, indeed, for all practical pur- 
poses, infinite. It is with a triumphant emotion, that an 
aspiring spirit, assured of living for ever, trusting in the divine 
mercythat it shall be happy in that eternity of life, and certain 
that its happiness must arise from the impressions made on it 
by surrounding existences, — it is with an emphatic emotion 
of triumph that such a spirit considers the vastness of the 
universe, as progressively demonstrated to us by the advances 
of science, and as attempted to be realized by an earnest, a 
delightful, but still an overwhelmed effort of imagination. For 
it regards the infinity of things as the scene of its indefatigable 



304 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 

and everlasting activity, in which it shall find that millions 
of contemplated manifestations of beauty and sublimity are 
but preparing it to advance to new visions, with perceptions 
for ever becoming more vivid, and delight for ever growing 
more intense. 

A spirit of this order will regard the ample display of beauty 
and magnificence made even to the inhabitants of this globe, 
as forming a kind of introductory stage for the indulgence and 
exercise of curiosity and admiration ; and as adapted, in com- 
bination with the objects of religious faith, to operate on the 
conformation and habitudes of the mind with an influence not 
less salutary than pleasing. This admirer of the Creator's 
works will, indeed, be sometimes compelled to regret the 
feebleness of the senses by means of which the soul is reduced 
to receive its perceptions of creation ; will sometimes be 
tempted to deplore the inferiority of the terrestrial region 
itself to such worlds as he can easily imagine to exist ; and 
will much oftener lament, that even of this sublunary scene, 
he is by many causes, confined to contemplate, immediately 
with his own faculties of perception, an extremely diminutive 
portion, and perhaps of an immensely inferior character, in 
point of beauty and sublimity, to many other portions of it ; 
yet he will, nevertheless, be arrested and delighted by many 
phenomena ; will often lose himself in inquisition and wonder ; 
and, on the whole, will be sensible that nature greatly affects 
the habitual state of his mind. 

Such a description is applicable, however, to a very small 
number, comparatively, of the human race. This captivation 
of nature is felt by extremely few but highly cultivated minds, 
and, indeed, by the smaller proportion only even of them. 
Here and there, a rare individual who has received from nature 
an extraordinary measure of imagination and sensibility, feels 
the enchanting inflfuence in the early years of life, antecedent 
to the high cultivation of the faculties ; and onward through 
life, though the full means and advantages of that discipline 
should never be enjoyed. But it is notorious that the gener- 
ality of men are exempt. Savages are quite insensible to the 
beautiful or the awful aspect of the scenes in which they are 
pursuing their occupations of hunting, fishing, and war. 
They would stand without emotion on the precipice from which 
they Avould look down on the cataract of Niagara. Nor, per- 
haps, would the half-civilized Canadian hunter be betrayed, in 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 305 

the same situation, into any great excess of solemnity or en- 
thusiasm. We remember the perfect sobriety of prose with 
which an American man of the woods, who was even capable 
of writing a book, Patrick Gass, has described or mentioned 
the great falls of the Missouri. The same want of what may 
be called poetical feeling, regarding the sublimities of scenery, 
is apparent in all the uncultivated and slightly cultivated na- 
tions, from the savage up to the confines of the civilized state ; 
in the South Americans, the Tartars, the Laplanders, the Nor- 
wegians, and even the Icelanders, — excepting that some 
among these North European nations associate certain mys- 
terious ideas of reverence and fear with their great mountains. 
We are not aware, that even in the inhabitants of Switzer- 
land, an admiration of its grand scenery constitutes any mate- 
rial part of that passion for their country for which they are 
so celebrated. We need not say a word of the mass of the 
population of those regions, which combine the beauties of 
nature with the striking remains of the Grecian and Roman 
taste and magniticence. If we come, at last, to what assumes, 
and, indeed, we believe justly assumes, to be the most cultiva- 
ted people on earth, we doubt whether ^ve can make any 
striking improvement of the representation, as to the inspiring 
and elevating influence of nature, and the number and enthu- 
siasm of her pupils. Of the several divisions of our terri- 
tory and people, the country and posterity of Ossian have as- 
sumed greatly the highest character for influences exerted by 
the scenery and felt by the people. We have read, in close 
succession. Dr. Johnson's account of the region and the race, 
and Mrs. Grant's : a conjunction and comparison which re- 
minded us of the description given by travellers of the 
flowery tracts immediately on the edge of the eternal ice on 
the lower declivities of the Alps. It would be delightful to 
receive Mrs. Grant's representation as the correct one ; and, 
therefore, we endeavour, with all our might, to believe in it ; 
nevertheless, we are visited by strong surmises of iminten- 
tional poetry in the lady's very interesting memorials of a na- 
tional character, which, she confesses, is fast approaching to 
extinction. While we can conceive, and indeed admit, that 
there was in the character of the Highlanders, before the 
breaking up of their ancient social economy, something more 
imaginative, more perceptive of the gloomy sublimity of their 
scenery, more responsive, by solemn and elevated sentiments, 



306 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 

to its aspects, than was perhaps ever to be found in any other 
uncultivated tribe inhabiting a similar region, it would yet be 
absurd to set substantially aside, in favour of this one race, 
the general law, that unexpanded faculties, undisciplined taste, 
scantiness of associated ideas, want of the means of judging 
of objects by comparison ; — in one word, that ignorance must 
inevitably preclude, in a great degree, that kind of sensibility 
and reflection by which the mind has its perception of the 
fair, the marvellous, and the sublime in nature. And, doubt- 
less, the contemplative enthusiasm indulged on the mountains, 
among the rocks, by the torrents and cataracts, and on the 
sea shore, was confined to the few spirits of the family or the 
kindred of genius, while the great majority could behold such 
objects with only a little less temperance of emotion than the 
ordinary tone of sentiment among other rustic portions of man- 
kind. Assuredly it was not every Highlander that gave out 
emanations of poetry while passing under impending preci- 
pices, or standing on the summits of mountains. 

If we descend from that legendary, visionary, and almost 
vanished race, to the uncultivated population of England, 
Wales, and Ireland, there will need no other experiment than 
that of a short sojourn in Cumberland, in Carnarvonshire, or 
near the lakes of Killarney, to estimate the influence of 
natural beauty and grandeur on the generality of the people 
placed under their habitual operation. And we apprehend 
that the investigator will be utterly disappointed if he expects 
to find any mental modification, corresponding to the noble- 
ness of the scenes. He will find that the main proportion of 
their habitual spectators are not either consciously or uncon- 
sciously the subjects of their power. Not unconsciously ; 
they have not acquired insensibly a richer imagination ; they 
have not a more vivid sensibility to the sublime and beautiful 
generally, as elements in the constitution of the natural and 
moral world, and as displayed in literature and the arts. Not 
consciously : they are not haunted by the images of the grand 
peculiarities of the scene around them ; their minds are not 
arrested and thrown into trains of thought by their aspect ; 
they can pass long spaces of time without even distinctly re- 
cognizing them as objects to be thought of when they are seen, 
and still longer spaces without employing any of their leisure 
in visiting the spots (perhaps not far oft") which are the most 
striking in themselves, or which afford the most commanding 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 307 

views of the wonders of the region. And if sometimes a 
party of pleasure is made up for such a visit, it is very com- 
monly seen that the graces or the majesty of nature engage 
but very little of their attention, and that they scarcely at all, 
unless perhaps by augmented hilarity, affect the tone of their 
feelings. The looks, sometimes thrown vaguely over the 
scene, are evidently not such as to bring the soul in contact 
with it : 

'* There is no speculation in those eyes. " 

The lively talk about indifferent subjects, the freaks and frolic, 
the good or bad cheer, the little diverting or vexatious inci- 
dents, shall so besport away the hours and faculties, that the 
whole expedition might appear to have been planned as an in- 
sult on the goddess (that has had so many pretended worship- 
pers, and so few true ones) Nature, in the way of practically 
telling her how little all her fine things are good for. 

Among a multitude of flights of rhapsody in the work that 
has led us into these observations, there is one in glorification 
of Snowdon, in which, after a great deal of probably real, and 
certainly reasonable enthusiasm, with an addition of what we 
suspect to be rhetorical affectation, it is asserted, without the 
compliment of looking round in anticipation of any body's 
scepticism, that " No one ever mounted this towering emi- 
nence but he became a wiser and a better man." And 
several particulars are specified, in which it is assumed as in- 
fallible, that this transforming energy must evince itself on a 
summit, which, it seems, is high enough to attract the influ- 
ences of a heaven superior to that of the lightnings. This 
bold position imports at the very least, and as the minor part 
of the fact which it asserts, that every one who beholds what 
may be seen from that eminence, is profoundly affected by the 
magnificent vision. Now, we happen to have had plentiful 
evidence on the spot, that a number of human beings may 
look from that sublime position, on all that it commands, by the 
light of the rising sun, and be little more impressed and de- 
tained by the view than they would in standing to contem- 
plate, on the busy day, the market place of any large town, 
and very much less than in surveying that area when filled 
with the exhibitions of a fair. As the rule must be, that the 
subsequent effects on the mind can only be in proportion to 
the force of the impression, it is not worth while to waste 
even a guess on the probable improvement in goodness, wis- 



308 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATFEE. 

dom, or taste, derived by these spectators from a scene to 
which these islands, perhaps, do net aff3rd an equal. 

It is to the uncultivated portion of a nation which, never- 
theless, accounts itself collectively more cultivated than all 
others, that we have mainly limited these observations. But 
whoever has had many opportunities of observing, with respect 
to the point in question, the much smaller portion that may 
make pretensions to be distinguished as cultivated, m ill have 
to testify that a real, thoughtful perception, and a genuine, 
ardent admiration, of the beautiful and sublime of nature, 
are among the very rarest endowments or acquirements of ed- 
ucated and well informed persons. His deposition will un- 
questionably be, that but very few among the elegant and 
polished part of the community, very few among the studious 
and learned, very few of those who are occupied in the higher 
professions, are intent observers of the material world, with 
the direct thought of its being the very basis and archetype of 
whatever we can know of the fair, the harmonious, and the 
grand ; with a direct wish and study, therefore, to have the 
economy of the mind, as to taste and imagination, and partly 
as to intellect itself, formed and modilied in accordance to it ; 
and with a feeling that there is, through all nature, some mys- 
terious element like soul, which comes, with a deep signifi- 
cance, to mingle itself with their own conscious being. 

Nevertheless, there is a proportion of cultivated minds, 
(and we must reckon, inclusively or additionally, an extremely 
few spirits but slightly cultivated in a strictly literary sense, 
yet strongly instinct with genius) that find, in the wide field of 
nature, something indefinitely more than a mere indifferent 
ground on which to prosecute the journey and accomplish the 
ordinary business of life. They find it a scene marked all 
over Avith mystical figures, the prints and traces, as it were, 
of the frequentation and agency of superior spirits. They 
find it sometimes concentrating their faculties to curious and 
minute inspection, sometimes dilating them to the expansion 
of vast and magnificent forms ; sometimes beguiling them out 
of all precise recognition of material realities, whether small 
or great, into visionary musings, and habitually and in all 
ways conveying into the mind, trains and masses of ideas of 
an order not to be acquired in the schools, and exerting a modi- 
fying and assimilating influence on the whole mental economy. 

Now a clear intellectual illustration of all this might fairly 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 309 

assume the title of " The Philosophy of Nature." Such a 
work would not, perhaps, have been required to commence 
with the very elements of the philosophy of the mind, or an 
abstruse investigation into the principles of sublimity and 
beauty. It might, perhaps, not improperly begin with infer- 
ences from the striking and obvious fact, repeatedly dwelt on 
by philosophers and poets, that in the constitution of the mate- 
rial world, the Creator's intentions were much beyond a pro- 
vision for mere necessity and plain utility, in the strict sense 
of those terms ; that it was determined there should be, in the 
mundane economy for man, something besides the means of 
physical well-being, something besides moral order, and even 
religious truth : that the system was made to include a mar- 
vellous provision for taste and imagination, and for an infinity 
of pleasing emotions excited through the medium of these 
faculties. The comprehensive inference, capable of being 
established in several forms and illustrations, is plainly this, 
that the human mind should not be insensible to this signally 
remarkable part of the divine economy, but should be both 
passively and actively responsive to it. 

A rapid general view might then be taken of the actual 
state of the human mind, past and present, as to its modes 
and degrees of sensibility to this grand circumstance in the 
Creator's work. It might be shown in what manner this 
sensibility has appeared to manifest itself in various nations, 
in the character of their philosophy and their superstitions, 
of their poetry and other fine arts. Such a survey would 
contribute to ascertain the influence of civilization in bring- 
ing this otherwise nearly dormant sensibility into an effective 
state. And it would, alas ! too opprobriously show how 
easily this fine faculty may be perverted into superstition and 
idolatry. There would sometimes occur, during this review, 
the very remarkable fact of this sensibility's acquiring, when 
converted into superstition, tenfold the poignancy it ever had 
before ; tril^es of human beings, who would have been but 
feebly impressed by the beauty and grandeur of nature in 
itself, or as a work of God, being enthusiastic for that beauty 
and sublimity just when, and so far as, profaned into the ma- 
terials of a false religion. Thus men obtained something 
like the accomplishment of the expectation of our first pa- 
rents, a more vivid perception, by means of their sin, of what 
was fair and sublime. 
14* 



310 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 

The supposed work might inquire what class of the beau- 
ties, that may be comprehended within the wide term 
" scenery," may have had the greatest power over susceptible 
minds. And it might be shown how the different orders of 
genius are attracted and modified respectively by those dif- 
ferent classes of nature's exhibitions. 

It would be a matter of very great interest to determine, 
under what conditions this influence of nature, where it does 
actually operate on the taste and imagination, shall also be 
salutary in a moral respect. It has been a favourite doctrine 
with many men of sensibility and genius, that these captiva- 
tions of nature are absolutely and almost necessarily condu- 
cive to the moral rectitude of the mind ; that they uncondi- 
tionally tend to purify, to harmonize, and to exalt, the prin- 
ciples and the affections. If the maintainers of this opinion, 
so kind to our nature, had not examined the human mind 
enough to know, from its very constitution, that in some modes 
and degrees of its depravity, it not only may fail to be cor- 
rected by the perception of these charms of nature, but may 
receive their influence so that it shall augment the depravity, 
— it is strange that their faith was not shaken by the no- 
torious fact, that many fine geniuses of the very class most 
alive to the beauty and sublimity of nature, poets and painters, 
have been among the most profligate of men ; — not to notice 
that the inhabitants of some of the most paradisaical and 
romantic sections of the earth, are among the most basely 
corrupt of the whole human race. Let any man recollect 
what he has read and heard of the inhabitants of the most 
exquisite countries on the Mediterranean. 

Another object of the supposed inquiry, would be to deter- 
mine what mode of training from childhood, ^vhat kind of 
locality for residence, what studies and occupations, would 
most effectually dispose and gratify a mind possessed of the 
requisite native sensibility, for feeling these finer influences 
of the material world. It would also be a very capital object 
to teach the art and habit of ohsermng the scenery of nature ; 
— an instruction which might, with the greatest propriety, be 
accompanied by an emphatical censure of the careless stu- 
pidity of the man who can, for half a century, carry about the 
world a soul, accommodated with the organs of sight and 
hearing, and scarcely twenty times in that whole lapse of 
duration, fix an intense, examining, prolonged attention, on 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 311 

any of the innumerable displays exhibited in the elegance and 
grandeur of the creation. 

It would be a gratifying and an easy part of the undertak- 
ing to show, chiefly by means of well-selected examples, the 
vast advantage to eloquence, and indeed to all serious, moral, 
and religious instruction, — derivable in the form of striking 
analogies, happy illustrations, and a diction full of colour and 
and life, — from having the prodigious world without the mind, 
brought, in its representative imagery, to be an ideal world, 
almost as rich, within it. 

In the last place, it would be proper, in some part of such 
a work, to caution men of genius, who both perceive the palpa- 
ble material beauty and grandeur of the creation, and feel, in 
the contemplation, the influence as of some more refined and 
ideal element, far beyond the perception of the senses, against 
sufl^ering themselves to be deluded into a notion that this ab- 
stracted and elevated mode of feeling is something so analo- 
gous to religion as to render it of less importance to attain 
that distinct and diviner sentiment. The fine enthusiasm of 
this feeling made some ancient, and has made some modern 
philosophers, content with acknowledging, as supreme in the 
universe, some kind of all-pervading spirit less than a real in- 
telligence. And among certain modern poets, we have heard 
of a mystical spiritualization of the earth and the heavens, 
which, under the denomination of physiojMihy, was to be re- 
garded as the most refined mode of religion, and peculiarly 
adapted to the most subtile and purified human spirits, though 
it was less than an acknowledgment of absolute intelligence 
in the object adored ! — It is not, however, against this that, 
we particularly mean the caution ; but against the delusion, 
in minds firmly believing in a God, of the self-flattery that 
being exceedingly enchanted and elevated in contemplating 
his works, must of itself necessarily be, in effect, identical 
with devotion towards Him. 

These paragraphs may serve as a slight rudimental sug- 
gestion of the topics of an investigation which, in proper 
hands, might be interesting and valuable ; — most eminently 
so, if it were possible to compel to such a task, for instance, 
one genius that, more than any other, has sojourned on that 
fi'ontier, where the material and the ideal worlds join and 
combine their elements ; that has seen those elements, as it 
were, mutually interfused, in a state of assmiilation more in- 



312 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 

timate than mere analogy. It may not have been with a very 
sanguine hope of finding such a service performed that we 
took up the present work ; we did, however, reckon on a cer- 
tain measure of systematic and continuous investigation ; but 
we soon perceived that the lively author was not at all 
enamoured of regular and hard labour. We found he had 
been injudicious rather than intentionally deceptive, in the 
choice of a title of so grave and high import. His work was 
designed for a discursive and amusing miscellany, rather than 
an elaborate disquisition : and if some title, indicative of this, 
had been adopted, instead of the term of large profession and 
assumption, " Philosophy," the reader might have had no 
great cause to complain ; for it contains, though in the most 
dissipated and desultory form it is possible to conceive, a 
great number of sprightly sentiments, with a multitude of 
slight notices of facts, places, and remarkable persons ; and 
the whole is decorated with a liberal sprinkling of classical 
quotation. The writer is e\'idently a man of cultivated taste, 
of very extensive reading, and of active, buoyant fancy. We 
only regret that he should never have cared to know there 
are such things as order in thinking, and method in com- 
position. 

He introduces himself in an unassuming, ingenuous, and, 
therefore, conciliatory manner. 

" The following pages are the result of hours stolen fronn an applica- 
tion to higher interests, and from the severity of graver subjects. — They 
were written in the privacy of retirement, among scenes worthy the pen 
of Virgil, and the pencil of Lorraine: — Scenes, which afford perpetual 
subjects for meditation to all those who take a melancholy pleasure in 
contrasting the dignified simplicity of nature, with the vanity, ignorance, 
and presumption of man. 

" ' There is no one,' says one of the best and soundest moralists of our 
age, ' there is no one, however limited his powers, Avho ought not to be 
actuated by a desire of leaving something behind him which should 
operate as an evidence that he once existed ' — During those hours of 
peaceful enjoyment, in which these pages were composed, such was the 
ambition by which the writer was animated Upon revising what he has 
written, however, and comparing it with those ideas of excellence, which, 
in no very courteous language, whisper a knowledge of what abler pens 
than his would have written, on a subject so well selected for eliciting all 
the best energies of genius, he is awed from any expectation of an honour- 
able distinction ; and nothing supplies the place of those golden dreams 
which once delighted him, but tlie satisfaction of having passed, happily 
and innocently, hours which would otherwise have been listless, usciess, 
and unnumbered." 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 313 

We do not well comprehend why, unless the author suffer- 
ed some physical disability for roving, his hours should ne- 
cessarily have been listless, in such scenes, though he had 
not been stimulated by this ambition, and animated by these 
golden dreams. Are, then, the charms of nature so pas- 
sionately and poetically chanted through several hundred 
pages, in truth, after all, so feeble, that even their " fond en- 
thusiast " would soon cease to feel their power, were they 
not so fortunate as to become the accessories of his vanity or 
ambition ? When we see the pupil and devotee of nature, 
apparently insensible that he is wandering or that he is fixed 
to the spot ; when we perceive his eye sometimes arrested 
and fixed in its gaze, as if by some enchantment, and some- 
times in a "fine frenzy rolling;" when we are fearing and 
avoiding to disturb him by a movement or a word, as we 
should a person engaged in an act of religious worship ; 
when we are envying the rapture with which he contemplates 
the beauty of the groves, and listens to their music, or be- 
holds the torrent, the mountain, or the vast landscape ; — what! 
are we soon to find out that the vital sentiment, the pre- 
dominant idea in all this enthusiasm, has been no other than 
the anticipation of the praise to be got by a fine printed de- 
scription of these objects, and of the tasteful delirium into 
which they have rapt him ? — And then as to what the quoted 
and approved " moralist " says ; — doubtless every man should 
endeavour to do so much good, that some part or trace of it 
will necessarily stay behind him, when he quits the world : 
but if it is meant that the actuating motive in such exertion 
ought to be ambition to secure a monument to his fame, Ave 
think it must have been a lying oracle that this so excellent 
a moralist had consulted. 

But it will seem trifling to have noticed these matters in 
the introduction, when the reader finds that the whole work 
swarms with all the peccadilloes with which carelessness, 
versatile fancy, random wildness of declamation, and a mo- 
rality without a sufficiently fixed standard, could furnish it. 

No critic can attempt the book in the ordinary methods of 
the profession. It is perfectly without plan in either fact or 
pretension. It has no divisions, except that all the paragraphs 
are distinguished by Roman numerals, to the amount of be- 
tween four and five hundred. In some places there is a small 
degree of sequence and relation among half a dozen of these 



314 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 

neighbour paragraphs : but, taking the whole work together, 
we think it would be possible, without impairing the book in 
point of regular connexion, to put the series in twenty very 
different orders of succession. And yet, from whatever cause, 
we think we have never had a feeling so tolerant for so un- 
pardonable a contempt of arrangement. For one thing, the 
subject itself is rich and attractive, whether exhibited in 
order or confusion : and indeed our author would plead, if 
called rigorously to account, that he has, in this disorder, 
imitated nature herself, who throws her multitudinous pro- 
ductions in the most promiscuous manner over the terrestrial 
scene. He is, besides, we think, in a very considerable de- 
gree, a real enthusiast for nature ; and therefore he gains a 
good deal of that favour which is always attracted by what 
appear to be genuine avowals of passion for a deserving ob- 
ject : — at the same time there is not a little of what we must 
regard as very extravagant, and suspect of being downright 
extravagance prepense. The principal thing, however, that 
prevents the reader's weariness, and beguiles the critic's 
anger, is, that this extensive tract of utter confusion is not a 
mere rhapsody of sentiment : it is crowded with brief refer- 
ences to matters of fact which are well worth knowing. The 
excursive manner in which the author pursues his general 
object, carries him and his readers into every part of the 
globe ; and though this " racing and chasing " would be un- 
necessary and undesirable, and we might endure to be kept 
much more still, if we were in the company of a veritable 
philosopher, it must be confessed that the lively talk of our 
author does better as the accompaniment of these excursions, 
than it would without them. We are entertained with the 
transient views of grand natural objects, of the present or 
ancient state of places memorable in history, of the peculiar 
aspects of various picturesque regions, or of the monumental 
relics that give occasion to recall to memory the great human 
actors or thinkers of past times. We have, besides, ani- 
mated characters and eulogiums of the most distinguished 
poets of nature, and notices of the most celebrated landscape 
painters. 

The width of the author's excursions comprehends almost 
all that is the most remarkable in the natural scenery of the 
whole earth. His reading of books of travels must have been 
prodigious ; and with the finest of what we may call the home 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 315 

scenery, he appears to be personally familiar. The grand 
transient phenomena of the elements do not escape his atten- 
tion in his range. He sometimes speculates very briefly on 
their causes, in a way rather to show that he has read the con- 
jectures and theories on the subject, than that he has scientifi- 
cally studied them. He greatly prefers, and indeed is justified 
by the design of his work in preferring, moral and sentimental 
descants to any thing approaching to strictly philosophical dis- 
quisition. He has reflections and emotions to express at 
every place and on everj subject ; and considering the un- 
laboured, uninvestiofatinoj strain of thouo^ht and feeling which 
he revels in, we almost wonder there is not a greater degree 
of sameness. 

By the plan of his work, he crowds the dominion of Nature 
wdth even more than honestly belongs to her, for in rambling 
among the riches of the physical region, he is continually find- 
ing matters of literature and art thrown in his way ; and in 
fantastic, sudden, and endless changes, he sports the charac- 
ter of critic or historian, mingled with that of antiquary, vir- 
tuoso, or ranting enthusiast. Sometimes he will be a sober 
geographer, then he is called upon to estimate the respective 
merits of the orders of architecture ; next it is violets and 
roses, and birds of paradise, and music, and beauty, and all for 
love ; immediately at hand, however, are battles, and thun- 
ders, and whirlwinds, and inundations, and earthquakes, and 
volcanic fires ; next in adventure in the regions of Aurora Bo- 
realis, and thence a desperate plunge to the bottom of the 
ocean ; but quickly emerging, this volatile and wayward spirit 
probably goes to study philosophy and poetry in India. — No 
transitions of gay, and rapid, and brilliant confusion that any 
reader can have previously imagined, will be found, when he 
comes to the book itself, to have been too fantastic an antici- 
pation of its character. 

There is frequently a considerable intermingling of appa- 
rently devotional sentiment : it will not be wondered at if this 
sentiment has too little of the definite character of religious 
faith ; and if there are many heedless expressions, assump- 
tions, and implications, not very compatible with a cautiously 
strict adherence to the oracles of revelation, though doubtless 
clear of any intentional discordance with them. The general 
spirit of the work is rather too much like a worship alternate- 
ly of nature itself, and of the God of nature, as divested of any 



316 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 

other character in which the inhabitants of this world have to 
contemplate him. 

There is much amiable moral sentiment in the work. The 
author is a zealous inculcator of peace, and all the principles 
and duties of justice and charitj. He has also the Greek and 
Roman spirit of liberty. • 



CARR's stranger in IRELAND. 317 



XV. 



IRELAND 



The Stranger in Ireland^ or a- Tour in the Southern and West- 
ern Parts of that Country^ in the Year 1805. By John 
Carr, Esq. 

Mr. Carr is a traveller whom any sensible observer would 
like to accompany a tew hundred miles. He possesses, in 
perfection, one qualiiication, for which many men who have 
more curiosity than spirit or address, will envy him, and very 
justly envy him ; a happy mixture of confidence, adroitness, 
and insinuation. By means of this he obtains access to every 
place and every person without the smallest difficulty. The 
moment he arrives at any place as a perfect stranger, he seems 
to inform himself of everything which it would be desirable to 
inspect, and the next moment he is introduced to the object of 
curiosity as readily as if he had lived on the spot twenty years, 
and knew every person there. He enters with equal ease the 
peasant's cabin, the country ale-house, the city-hotel, and the 
splendid mansion of nobility. No apprehensive awkwardness 
detains him at the gate of a great man's house, hesitating some 
minutes betbre he ventures to ring the bell, as many a poor 
scholar, or rustic man of taste, and even many a philosopher 
would do, while he tried to inspirit himself by recollecting the 
maxims of Epictetus, or the noble sentiments of modern doc- 
tors on the subject of the equality of mankind. He presents 
himself with an air perfectly unembarrassed, and the "pam- 
pered menial" skips along the hall to announce he has, no 
doubt, some old familiar acquaintance of my lord. If, on the 
introduction, my lord should amidst his complaisance, show 
any little degree of grave doubtful inquisitiveness, Mr. Carr 
advances with such a frank and gallant air, that formal cere- 
mony is ashamed to stay in the room, and quickly takes 
itself off. 



318 carr's stranger in Ireland. 

The travelling vehicles in some parts of Ireland are justly 
described as miserable conveyances, and there is many a wor- 
thy English gentleman that would deny himself the sight of 
the most beautiful scenes, if he must visit them under the pains 
and penalties of being jammed, and rattled, and tossed, and 
stared at, in a jingle, a noddy, or a jaunting car. Our author, 
though no stranger to the luxury of easy or splendid carriages, 
was capable of very properly despising a temporary inconve- 
nience, if any gratification of his taste for the beautiful or the 
sublime was to be obtained by enduring it. And though a 
connoisseur in matters of good living, and especially an excel- 
lent judge of wines, he could make himself very easy and 
pleasant over the most homely viands, in those wild situations, 
where it would have been absurd to complain that the host- 
ess had not studied any large volume on the art of cookery, 
and had not a larder or cellar ample enough to turn such study 
to any great practical account. With the exception of a few 
such slight inconveniences, no traveller ever went on under a 
more continual sunshine of good fortune than Mr. Carr, ac- 
cording to his lively narrative. The " Green Island" seems 
to have arrayed itself in all its beauties to receive him, and 
the utmost politeness of its inhabitants met him at every stage. 
Nor did these gratifying circumstances fail to produce the due 
effect on the traveller, whose good-humour would appear to 
have been but very few times interrupted. This good-hu- 
mour sparkles out in a continual series of light pleasantries ; 
and though we would not harshly censure the gayety which an 
extensive view of an unhappy nation did not repress, yet we 
cannot help thinking that a philanthropy of the most elevated 
kind would occasionally have been pensive, where Mr. Carr 
is very sprightly, and that a refined love of justice would have 
been severe and indignant, in a few instances in which he is 
extremely tolerant. 

Mr. Carr's intellectual qualifications are well adapted to 
that kind of travelling which the present volume exhibits. He 
does not survey a country with a view to form or illustrate 
moral or political theories, or to select the physical subjects of 
scientific investigation. It is not in the particular character of 
naturalist, virtuoso, antiquarian, or statesman, that he travels, 
nor exactly in the character of philosopher, but simply in that 
of a man of sense and taste, who wishes fairly to see and hear 
whatever is most deserving of attention, and to write a spirit- 



CAEr's stranger in IRELAND. 319 

ed description and narration of what he happens to observe. 
We certainly could have wished, on some occasions, a little 
more grave research, at the same time that we deprecate that 
pedantry which cannot make a remark without extending it 
into a dissertation. It is with a very ill will, we own, that we 
accompany a traveller, who regularly at every town he comes 
to, or at every old heap of stones near the road, plants himself 
in form to make a long speech. Mr. Carr generally seizes 
with quickness and accuracy the characteristic peculiar- 
ities of the people, and of local situations, while he passes 
from place to place with a celerity which gives us the idea of 
scampering. 

In the preface, and in several other parts of the book, he 
takes pains to apprise the reader, that none of his observa- 
tions on the state of Ireland are to be construed as referring to 
political questions, or as intimating any kind of opinion on the 
causes of the late melancholy events in that country. Proba- 
bly this is a well-judged forbearance, in a work like the pre- 
sent. But we earnestly wish some liberal Englishman, who 
has been long conversant with mankind and with the specula- 
tions relating to their interests, who is equally free from su- 
perstitious veneration for old practices and from a rage for 
novelty and hazardous experiments, who is pure from the in- 
fection of party interest, and dares to arraign indifferently any 
party or every party at the bar of absolute justice, would tra- 
verse Ireland expressly with a view to form a comprehensive 
estimate of the moral and political condition and wants of the 
people ; and then present to the public the assemblage of facts, 
together with the observations which he had been most 
prompted to make, while those facts were before him. 

The first chapter narrates the journey from London, (as it 
should seem) to the entrance of the bay of Dublin, and it 
makes us perfectly acquainted Avith the dispositions of the 
traveller. Our readers never met with a more gay and ani- 
mated gentleman in their lives. He never lets himself be 
long disconcerted by untoward circumstances. If for a mo- 
ment his indignation is excited by " those detestable corrupt 
harpies called custom-house officers," he almost immediately 
forgets them. And even the pains of sympathy, which he 
sometimes feels, do not become troublesome to the reader, by 
producing long sentimental declamations. The tragical ob- 
jects which occasionally interrupt the course of his pleasantry, 



320 carr's stranger in Ireland. 

do not in the least haunt him afterwards. Though decorous- 
ly serious, or at least demure, in the house of mourning, he can 
laugh, dance, and sing, as soon as he has quitted it. 

Tiie first chapter is marked by almost all the characteris- 
tics which distinguish Mr. Carr's manner of writing travels. 
The descriptions are quick, clear, and lively. He marks so 
well the prominent circumstances of each situation or society, 
that he really makes his reader his companion : and this we 
deem very high praise. At the same time we are disposed to 
complain, that ho rather too often introduces from his memory, 
at the suggestion of some very slight association of thought, 
stories which might quite as well have been put in any other 
part of the book, or in no part of it. These may sometimes 
be curious in themselves, like the circumstance of Mr. Bol- 
ton's wager in Paris, (p. 6,) and might do very well to keep up 
the chat with his associates in the coach ; but the reader of a 
costly book of travels will not be so patient. He wants in- 
formation strictly relating to the place which the traveller has 
thought it worth while to visit and describe, and can find mis- 
cellaneous anecdotes at any time, in any old volume of a mag- 
azine. We might complain too, that our author's lavish eulo- 
giums of all the people of rank that happen to be civil to him, 
have sometimes made us a little splenetic. We certainly are 
pleased with his good fortune in meeting so luckily with my 
Lady Tuite, &c. 6lc. ; and with his pat)ietic gratitude for 
slices of broiled mutton (especially as it was Welch mutton,) 
most seasonably given him when he was nearly famished in 
the packet ; but when we are told he made on the instant a 
solemn vow, that all his readers should be informed of this 
most rare bounty, we cannot but wish his conscience had per- 
mitted him to break it. We have a better opinion of Mr. 
Carr, than to think if Pat M'Cann, or Judith M'Nabb, or some 
such responsible personage, had divided the little stock of pro- 
visions with him, he would not have been grateful ; but we 
greatly doubt whether he would have been so eloquent. 

Now and then we meet with matters so trivial, that we are 
sorry a man of sense should have condescended to record 
them ; for instance, the story about the boots, page 24. No- 
thing can tend more effectually to bring the writing of travels 
into contempt, than to occupy splendid quarto pages with in- 
cidents, which a company of louts at a pot-house must be re- 
duced to a very great scarcity of subjects, before any of them 



CARR*S STRANGER IN IRELAND. 321 

would think it worth while to mention. Our author is so de- 
termined from the outset, to have something fimny, every few 
pages at least, that he m ill pick up the slightest facts or the 
slenderest ^vitticisms for that purpose, rather than go soberly 
on his journey. About every mile post he stops to laugh, and 
insists that his readers shall join him, wh^er they can or not. 
Sometimes, indeed, we readil}^ perform our part of this cere- 
mony ; as when he mentions, page 31, that " the secretary of 
a celebrated English agricultural society, received orders from 
its committee, to procure several copies of Mr. and Miss 
Edge worth's Essay on Irish Bulls, upon the first appearance 
of that admirable bock, for the use of the members in their 
labours for improving the breed of cattle." 

After escaping from what he calls oddly enough, "that con- 
summation of human misery, a cabin after a short voyage," 
he reaches Dublin, and frisks round a considertible part of the 
city before dinner, admiring, as every stranger will admire, 
several of the streets and squares, which are allowed to be 
among the noblest in Europe. His extensive previous travels 
enabled him to form a comparative judgment with great ad- 
vantage. But these proud exhibitions of wealth and taste 
cease to please a humane traveller, as soon as he beholds the 
hideous contrast between them and the dwellings and entire 
condition of the poor. It is melancholy to see in the imme- 
diate neighbourhood of all this splendour, the ample proofs 
how little the prosperous and powerful part of mankind care 
for the miserable. We do not pretend to believe that the re- 
sources of the rich, and the power of the state, could banish 
poverty, and the whole of its attendant and consequent evils, 
from a great city ; but it is impossible to see such sinks of filth, 
such a multitude of wretched, ragged, and half-famished 
creatures, crowded into alleys and cellars, and such a pro- 
digious number of mendicants, without pronouncing the 
severest condemnation on the idle and luxurious opulence, and 
the strange state policy, which can preserve, year after year, 
a cool indifference to all this misery. 

Mr. Carr visited the beautiful scenes in the county of 
Wicklow, and we should have thought meanly of his taste, if 
he had adopted, in describing them, a language of less animated 
admiration. We should have required this language from a 
man the most parsimonious of strong epithets ; but from our 
author we have a special claim to emphatical terms superla- 



32*2 

lively magnified, when speaking of grand subjects, because he 
sometimes applies emphatical terms, especially the word in- 
finite, to very little ones. We have hinted before that bril- 
liant expressions are elicited from him with wonderful facility 
and copiousness, whenever he comes within the precincts or 
the apartments of al|(Opulent villa. In page 200, he describes 
a visit to such a villa, the lady of which patronizes a school of 
industry for girls. This school it seems is in its nature a 
losing concern, and costs her some inconsiderable sum every 
year. In the contemplation of this generosity, Mr. Carr is so 
affected, that his thoughts are transported for once to the joys 
of heaven, as the unquestionable reversion awaiting such 
transcendent goodness. We were half inclined to take ex- 
ception to this language, as somewhat too strong for the oc- 
casion ; but we stood corrected for this feeling, on reading 
the paragraphg^immediately following, -which describe a mag- 
nificent and most extravagantly expensive luxury in the ap- 
pendages of this mansion. That after such a consumption of 
money, any small sum should have been reserA^ed for a school 
of industry, and that amidst such a " voluptuous" paradise, 
there should have been any recollection of so humble a con- 
cern, appeared to us an excess of bounty and condescension, 
which Mr. Carr's panegyric had too feebly applauded. But 
though the traveller's amiable propensity to celebrate good 
actions becomes peculiarly strong in the congenial neigh- 
bourhood of rank and elegance, it would be unjust to deny 
that he is capable of discerning excellence in subordinate 
stations of life. A little earlier in his book he gives an ex- 
ample, whicli we will transcribe, and we cannot help it if any 
reader should deem this a specimen of much more rare and 
costly virtue, than that which we have joined the author in ad- 
miring. 

" The following little anecdote will prove that magnanimity is also an 
inmate of an Irish cabin. During the march of a regiment, the Honour- 
able Captain P , who had the command of the artillery baggage, ob- 
serving that one of the peasants, whose car and horse had been pressed for 
the regiment, did not drive as fast as he ought, went up to him and struck 
him ; the poor fellow shrugged up his shoulders, and observed there was 
no occasion for a blow, and immediately quickened the pace of his animal. 
Some time afterwards, the artillery officer having been out shooting all 
the morning, entered a cabin for the purpose of resting himself, when he 
found the very peasant whom he had struck, at dinner with his wife and 
family : the man, who was very large and powerfully made, and whose 
abode was solitary, might have taken fatal revenge upon the officer, in- 



CAER's stranger in IRELAND. 323 

stead of which, immediately'recogiiiziiig him, he chose the best potato 
out of his bowl, and presenting it to his guest, said, ' There, your honour, 
obhge me by tasting a potato, and I hope it is a good one, but you should 
not have struck me ; a blow is hard to bear.' " — Pp. 150, 151. 

By means of a wide diversity of narrative and anecdote, 
Mr. Carr furnishes a striking picture of the Irish character, 
as it appears in the lower ranks throughout the middle and 
southern parts of the country. His manner of exhibiting the 
national character, by means of a great assortment of well- 
chosen facts, and short conversations, gives a much more 
lively representation than any formal philosophic work, com- 
posed chiefly of general observations. At the same time, it 
will not be unjust to remark, that only a very small portion 
of toil and reflection is necessary for executing such a work. 
Writing travelling memoranda was a pleasant employment of 
many intervals and evenings, which would otherwise have 
been unoccupied and tedious ; and, to form a volume, the au- 
thor had not much more to do than to revise these memoranda, 
and add certain extracts from old and new books, with a few 
calculations and general statements. The book is such an enu- 
meration of particulars, and series of short sketches, as a 
philosopher would wish to obtain in order to deduce, by ab- 
stracting the essence of the whole mixture, a comprehensive 
character of the people and the country. It is like an irregu- 
lar heap of materials which the artist must melt together, in 
order to cast one complete and well-proportioned figure. 

It will be obvious to the readers of this volume, that the 
Irish people have a national character widely difl^erent from 
that of the English. And it will be the utmost want of can- 
dour, we think, to deny that they are equal to any nation on 
the earth, in point of both physical and intellectual capability, 
A liberal system of government, and a high state of mental 
cultivation, would make them the Athenians of the British 
empire. By what mystery of iniquity, or infatuation of policy, 
has it come to pass, that they have been doomed to unalter- 
able ignorance, poverty, and misery, and reminded one age 
after another of their dependence on a protestant power, 
sometimes by disdainful neglect, and sometimes by the inflic- 
tion of plagues. The temper of our traveller is totally the re- 
verse of any thing like querulousness or faction ; but he oc- 
casionally avows, both in sorrow and in anger, the irresistible 
impression made, by what he witnessed, on an honest, and we 



324 carr's stranger in Ireland. 

believe we may say, generous mind. He clearly sees that 
the lower order of the people, whatever might be their dis- 
position, have in the present state of things absolutely no 
power to redeem themselves from their deplorable degrada- 
tion. Without some great, and as yet unattempted, and per- 
haps unprojected, plan for the relief of their pressing phy- 
sical wants, they may remain another century in a situation, 
which a Christian and a philanthropist cannot contemplate 
without a grief approaching to horror. Their popery and 
their vice will be alleged against them ; if the punishment is 
to be that they shall be left in that condition wherein they will 
inevitably continue popish and vicious still, their fate is in- 
deed mournful ; vengeance could hardly prompt a severer re- 
tribution. Mr. Carr approves of the Union, and faintly ex- 
presses his hope that great benefits may yet result from it ; 
but plainly acknowledges that a very different system of prac- 
tical administration must be adopted, before Ireland can have 
any material cause to be grateful for this important measure. 
It is a particular excellence of the book before us, that the 
diversified facts are so well exhibited, as to enable the reader 
to delineate for himself, without any further assistance of the 
author, the principal features of the Irish character ; insomuch 
that were he to visit Ireland, he would find that the previous 
reading of the book had made him completely at home in that 
country. The author however \vas willing to give a short ab- 
stract of his scattered estimates of Irish qualities, in the fol- 
lowing summary. Allow ing that the national character does 
really comprise these properties, we must however think that 
impartial justice would more strongly have marked some of the 
vices, which considerably shade this constellation of fine 
qualities. 

" With few materials for ingenuity to work with, the peasantry of 
Ireland are most ingenious, and with adequate inducements, laboriously 
indefatigable : they possess, in general, personal beauty and vigour of 
frame ; they abound with wit and sensibility, though all the avenues to 
useful knowledge are closed against them ; they are capable of forgiving in- 
juries, and are generous even to fheir oppressors ; tbey are sensible of superior 
merit, and submissive to it ; tliey display natural urbanity in rags and 
penury, are cordially hospitable, ardent for information, social in their 
habits, kind in their disposition, in gayety of heart and genuine humour 
unrivalled, even in their superstition presenting a union of pleasantry 
and tenderness ; warm and constant in their attachments, faithful and 
incorruptible in their engagements, innocent, with the power of sensual 
enjoyment perpetually within their reach ; observant of sexual modesty, 



CARR S STRANGER IX IRELAND. 325 

though crowded within the narrow Hmits of a cabin ; strangers to a crimo 
which reddens the cheek of manhood vvitli horror; tenacious of respect; 
acutely sensible of, and easily won by kindness. Such is the peasantry of 
Ireland ; I appeal not to the affections or the humanity, but to the justice 
of every one to whom chance may direct these pages, whether men so 
constituted present no character which a wise government can mould to 
the great purpose of augmenting the prosperity of the country, and the 
happiness of society. Well might Lord Chesterfield, when Lord Lieu- 
tenant of Ireland, exclaim, ' God has done every thing for this country, 
man nothing.' "—Pp. 292. 293. 

The author gives plenty of specimens of the ignorance, the 
fanaticism, the legends, and the superstition, of the lowest 
rank of the people ; and while we read them, we are indig- 
nant at the insinuation which occurs, we think more than 
once, against the wisdom or necessity o? ^ proselyting spirit on 
the part of the protestants. The view of such a state of the 
human mind ought to incite all pious protestants to move 
heaven and earth, if it were possible, to annihilate that mon- 
ster of error and corruption which produces and sanctions, and 
w^ill perpetuate in every country where it continues to prevail, 
that degradation of which the ignorant Irish are an example. 
But we cannot help perceiving, in several passages of the 
present volume, that our sprightly traveller is disposed to re- 
gard Revelation itself as rather a light matter ; we cannot 
wonder, therefore, at his being unconscious how important is 
the difference between an erroneous faith and worship, and 
the true. One of these passages is in page 33: "In God's 
name, let the Peruvians derive themselves from the sun ; let 
the Chinese boast of the existence of their empire eight 
thousand years before the creation of the world, according to 
our calculation," &c. If a man really holds the opinion im- 
plied in such expressions as these, (the palpable profaneness 
of which, too, deserves the severest condemnation,) we ought 
not to be surprised, that in the same volume or chapter the re- 
claiming of bogs is represented as an object to be strenuously 
promoted, and the reclaiming of miserable papists as an ob- 
ject for which it betrays some defect of judgment to show any 
great degree of zeal. Yet, on recollection, we do a little 
w^onder that Mr. Carr, though he should set aside all consider- 
ations of purely religious advantage, here or hereafter, should 
not see the importance, in relation to political economy, of the 
lower order being raised to that decent state of intellectual and 
moral improvement which there is not the smallest chance of 
15 



326 carr's stranger in Ireland. 

their attaining while under the influence of a superstition 
which governs them by besotting them. While, however, we 
condemn such indifference, especially when indiiierence af- 
fects the character of superior wisdom, we equally condemn 
all corrupt and all violent methods of advancing the protestant 
cause. It is not by tempting the conscience of the papist with 
a pitiful sum of money, nor by forcibly interrupting the follies 
of his public worship, nor by making him, for the sake of his 
religion, the subject of continual derision, nor by unne- 
cessarily excluding him from any advantage, that we could 
wish to see genuine Christianity aided, in its warfare against 
that wretched paganism, into which what was once religion is 
found degenerated, among all very ignorant papists in every 
country. We cannot but regret that both the civil and eccle- 
siastical rulers of Ireland should have been, for the most part, 
unacquainted with all apostolical methods of attempting the 
conversion of the catholics. And it is melancholy that the 
generality of the ostensible ministers of religion at present in 
that country, should be so very little either disposed or quali- 
fied to promote this great work. We happen to know, that 
there are some brilliant exceptions to this remark ; the lustre 
of whose character, if it cannot prevail to any distance, yet 
defines and exposes the obscurity which surrounds them. 

Our traveller was attentive to collect any kind of useM or 
amusing information, respecting the several places which he 
visited, and respecting the country at large. He is of opinion, 
that Ireland is of a temperature probably more mild and equal 
than that of any other country. Its unrivalled verdure is 
owing to its western position, where its hills are the first inter- 
ruption to the clouds of the Atlantic, in consequence of which 
the proportion of rainy w eather is much greater than in Eng- 
land. We presume this circumstance would render it, with 
the advantage of an equal cultivation, more richly productive 
of almost all the most valuable kinds of vegetables ; and Arthur 
Young, we recollect, has given it as his opinion, that the soil 
of Ireland is more fertile, acre against acre, than that of this 
country. The agriculture is described as considerably pro- 
gressive on the whole, in spite even of the singularly hapless 
condition of multitudes of its most valuable labourers. 

One of the most curious and interesting parts of the book 
is the account of the interior of the Irish bogs. In digging to 
a great depth in one of them, there were found three prostrate 



GARR's stranger in IRELAND. 327 

woods, one below another, and separated by successive deep 
strata of earth. Mr. Carr refers the investigation of these 
tacts to more philosophic men, apparently afraid of the gravity 
of such inquiries ; and lest even his momentary descent into 
the abyss of a bog-pit should have, on him or his readers, any 
such eftect as that of the cave of Trophonius, he inspirits him- 
self and them with a good story of an " embalmed cobbler," 
once found, with all his implements about him, in one of these 
places. Just in this manner a bog-digger takes his glass of 
whiskey before he begins. 

In the narration of the hasty visit to so enchanting a place 
as the lakes of Killarney, we were vexed that any of the pages 
should be occupied about such-a-one, Esq., and a second 
Esquire, and a third, and so on. It lessens the charm of the 
description, in the same manner as the crowded quarter- 
sessions in the town spoiled in a degree the pleasure of being 
in the place itself. We could also have well spared the foolish 
lines ofSAvift, called "A Gentle Echo on Women." We are, 
on the contrary, delighted with the little anecdote of the hunts- 
man, who set free a poor fawn which he had caught, because 
the dam followed him with tones of distress. Things like 
this are in harmony with the exquisite and tranquil beauty of 
the scene. As travellers cannot relate all the incidents 
they witness or hear of in each place which they visit, 
it would be the part of a judicious artist to select those 
which most harmonize with the character of the situation. 
Mr. Carr wants a good deal of improvement in this point. 
Not that we could have the conscience to require him to sup- 
press all the humorous anecdotes which he hears, but we really 
wish that, if he should ever visit another place like Killarney, 
he will make such a choice of facts and anecdotes, out of the 
whole mass which comes before him, as to aid the emotions 
of sublimity and beauty which are peculiarly appropriate to 
the place, and which the actual observer would be ashamed 
of himself if he did not feel as the prevailing state of his 
mind, while he remained amidst this magnificence of nature. 
We must not, however, forbear to add, that Mr. Carr does give 
a very pleasing account of this noble scene, notwithstanding 
the spirit and tone of the description are so unfortunately in- 
terrupted, when any jokes or ludicrous incidents, those literary 
wild-fowl in the pursuit of which our traveller is an incom- 
parable sportsman, happen to fly across his view. 



328 carr's stranger in Ireland. 

He went to Limerick and Cork, which he describes suffi- 
ciently in detail. The shocking accounts of the house of 
industry at Limerick, and of the house of industry and the old 
gaol at Cork, will sting the principal inhabitants, we hope, 
through very shame, to the adoption of some more humane, 
more decent, and more useful regulations. On reaching Kil- 
kenny he found "quite a jubilee bustle in the streets." The 
sacred flame of charity was glowing throughout all the town. 
It was understood that numbers of human beings were " sink- 
ing under want and misery ; " and a great company of gentle- 
men, and other people, were convened to make a noble effort 
of pure Christian munilicence. And in what manner, courteous 
reader, should you suppose the resources were to be supplied 
for executing the pious design? The money was obtained 
by means of theatricals, which are performed during one month 
every year, with an incalculable mischief, beyond all doubt, 
to the morals of the young people. The balance, after de- 
ducting the expenses attending the performance, is reckoned 
at about 200Z. This, as we should infer, from another item 
in the account, is not a fourth part of the whole sum paid for 
entrance into the theatre ; but how much of even this smaller 
sum would have been contributed for the charity, if it had not 
been extracted by means of this vain and noxious amusement ? 

Mr. Carr seems to have visited Ireland in the capacity of 
character-painter to the principal inhabitants. And as the 
other class of artists, portrait-painters, are said to keep a num. 
ber of Venuses, Adonises, Apollos, &;c. within sight while at 
their work, so we cannot be so simple as not to suspect that 
this moral painter has played off the same device on those 
who sat, and on us who are called to inspect and admire. He 
meets with a certain General here, at Kilkenny, whose 
generous patriotism may challenge the whole empire to pro- 
duce an equal. In this one instance, however, Mr. Carr does 
not attempt to put the trick upon us ; and we are thankful to 
him for his honesty. He might have observed a discreet si- 
lence as to the particular proof of this unrivalled generosity, 
and then we should have supposed this patriotism displayed 

itself in ; nay, should have very deeply pondered all the 

forms in which it could have been displayed, and tried to as- 
certain which is the most generous and useful. Has he built 
a hospital for the lame or blind ? Has he remitted his poor 
tenants half their rents on account of a severe season ] Has 



CAER's stranger in IRELAND. 329 

he helped a great many little farmers to cultivate pieces of 
waste land? Or perhaps he has established large schools for 
the decent education of the brats of the wild Irish. No, he 
has done something much nobler : he has made, each year, 
a large volunteer subscription, towards defraying the expense 
of carrying on the war. Cunning Mr. Painter ! always per- 
form in this manner ; and we shall not be tempted to the sin 
of reviling you for having taken us in. 

Our readers have often heard of the late Dean Kirwan, long 
celebrated for his charity sermons ; and if eloquence be 
rightly defined the art of persuading, it would appear that he 
must have been one of the greatest orators of modern times ; 
for the sums collected after his sermons, amounted in all, as 
we are informed by Mr. Carr, to nearly sixty thousand pounds. 
For purposes of mischief we have often enough had occasion 
to see that a mere second-rate eloquence is sufficient to obtain 
immensely greater sums ; and we have observed human na- 
ture too long to wonder at the fact ; but that a sum like the 
one here specified should be granted to the pleadings of 
charity, does excite our wonder we own, and also our 
curiosity to know the exact nature of the eloquence which had 
so great an efiect. Mr. Carr has given several pages of spe- 
cimens, which he obtained with difficulty fi*om a reverend 
admirer of the Dean, who had taken them down in short-hand. 
But whether it be, that the writer gave a cast of expression 
of his own to the sentences of the speaker, or whether there 
was a defect of taste in selecting them, or whether they were 
accompanied and enforced by unequal graces of delivery, or 
whether the great law of attraction exists in less force be- 
tween money and its owners in Ireland than in other countries, 
or whatever other cause, of w^hich we are not aware, con- 
tributed its influence, we acknowledge that we have some 
difficulty to comprehend, how a kind of oratory so very dis- 
similar to the noblest models of eloquence could produce the 
splendid result. These specimens too much remind us of the 
worst literary qualities of French oratory. The language has 
an artificial pomp, which is carried on, if we may so express 
it, at a certain uniform height above the thought, on all occa- 
sions ; like the gaudy canopy of some effi;minate oriental, 
which is still supported over him, with invariable and tiresome 
ceremony, whether he proceeds or stops, sleeps or wakes, 
rides or condescends to step on the ground. The images 
seem rather to be sought than to spring in the mind sponta- 



330 cahr's stranger i^ Ireland. 

neously, and to be chosen rather for their splendour than their 
appropriateness. And the train of thinking appears to have 
little of that distinct succession of ideas, and that logical articu- 
lation, which are requisite to impress sound conviction on the 
understanding. We fear, however, that we begin to descry 
one capital cause of the Dean's success, in something else 
than the literary merits of his oratory : and our readers will 
hardly avoid the same surmise when they read the following 
passage. Expressing his reverence for the man, " however 
he may differ in speculative opinions," who relieves the 
wretched, &c. &c., he proceeds : " Should such a man be ill- 
fated, here or hereafter, may his fate be light ! Should he 
transgress, may his transgressions be unrecorded ! Or if the 
page of his great account be stained with the weakness of 
human nature, or the misfortune of error, may the tears of the 
widow and the orphan, the tears of the wretched he has re- 
lieved, efface the too rigid and unfriendly characters, and blot 
out the guilt and remembrance of them for ever ! " Now if 
an admired preacher, after a pathetic address to the passions 
of a numerous and wealthy auditory, many of whom had never 
accurately studied the doctrines of Christianity, co?/M have the 
courage to proceed forward, and declare to them, in the name 
of heaven, that their pecuniary liberality to the claims of dis- 
tress in general, and especially to the case of distress imme- 
diately before them, would secure them, notwithstanding their 
past and future unrepented and unrelinquished sins, from all 
danger of divine condemnation ; intimating, also, that, on the 
extreme and improbable supposition that they should be con- 
signed to the region of punishment, it would prove so light an 
affair as to be rather a little misfortune than an awful calamity, 
he might certainly persuade them to an ample contribution. 
But that an enlightened minister of a protestant church could 
have the courage to declare or even insinuate the pernicious 
sentiment, awakens our utmost astonishment. We think there 
can be no doubt that a certain proportion of the money col- 
lected after the address, in which such a passage as this was 
seriously uttered, would be paid literally as the atonement for 
the past crimes, and as the price of an extended license to 
repeat them with impunity. If the whole of the oration was 
powerfully persuasive, we cannot fail to attribute a large share 
of the success to that particular part, so soothing to appre- 
hension, and so flattering to ignorance and corruption. 

In returning towards Dublin, our author made a visit to 



CARr's stranger in IRELAND. 331 

the house of Mr. Grattan ; and he might well feel himself 
flattered by the welcome, and the polite attention, which he 
experienced there, and gratified by the mental luxuries which, 
we may believe, scarcely another house could have supplied. 
We should have been glad to receive some more particular in- 
formation about this distinguished orator, than the assurance 
merely of his being a polite and hospita?3le man, an elegant 
scholar, and respectable in domestic relations. We should 
have been glad to hear something of his studies, his personal 
habits, his style of talking, or the manner in which he ap- 
pears to meet advancing age. Yet we acknowledge it is a 
difficult matter for a transient visitor, who is received on 
terms of fonnal politeness, to acquire much knowledge on 
some of these particulars, and a matter of some delicacy to 
publish what he might acquire. A number of pages are 
occupied with passages from Mr. Grattan's speeches ; some 
of which extracts, we believe, were supplied to Mr. Carr 
from memor}'', and therefore are probably given imperfectly. 
On the whole, however, these passages tend to confirm the 
general idea entertained of Mr. Grattan's eloquence, as dis- 
tinguished by fire, sublimity, and an immense reach of 
thought. A following chapter is chiefly composed of similar 
extracts from Mr. Curran's speeches ; in most of which the 
conceptions are expressed with more lucidness and precision 
than in the passages from Grattan. These specimens did 
not surprise, though they delighted us. We have long con- 
sidered this distinguished counsellor as possessed of a higher 
genius than anj^ one in his profession within the British em- 
pire. — The most obvious difference between these two great 
orators is, that Curran is more versatile, rising often to sub- 
limity, and often descending to pleasantry, and even drollery ; 
whereas Grattan is always grave and austere. Thej'" both 
possess that order of intellectual powers, of which the limits 
cannot be assigned. No conception could be so brilliant or 
original, that we should confidently pronounce that neither of 
these men could have uttered it. We regret to imagine how 
many admirable thoughts, which such men must have ex- 
pressed in the lapse of many years, have been unrecorded, 
and are lost for ever. We think of these with the same feel- 
ings, with which we have often read of the beautiful or sub- 
lime occasional phenomena of nature, in past times, or remote 
regions, which amazed and delighted the beholders, but which 
we were destined never to see. 



332 Cottle's fall of camsijia. 



XVL 



EPIC POETRY. 



The Fall of Cam'bria, a Poem. By Joseph Cottle* 

Our times are unfavourable, to the last degree, to the writers 
of that kind of poetry commonly called epic ; a denomination 
about which there has been, among critics, avast deal of su- 
perstition^ — a denomination as fairly applicable, for what any 
of them can show to the contrary, to any poetical narration 
of the great military transactions that have decided the destiny 
of a state, as to the Iliad — a denomination, therefore, which 
might with perfect propriety have appeared in the title-page of 
this work, had the author deemed it worth while to be tena- 
cious of so trifling a point of rank. The present times, we 
observe, are unfavourable, because a great part of the im- 
pressive power of the heroic poem obviously depends on the 
contrast between such transactions as it narrates, and the or- 
dinary course of human events. We have very naturally 
been accustomed to calculate the effect of this sort of poem, 
on an assumption that the fall of great states and monarchs, 
the extinction and creation of imperial dynasties, the exploits 
of great heroes, and such conflicts of armies as transfer 
whole nations to a new dominion, are things of so rare oc- 
currence as to be of themselves adapted to take possession of 
the utmost faculty of attention and wonder, and therefore to 
need nothing but the eloquence of poetry to give them an 
overpowering magnificence. In their plainest mode of re- 
presentation they must rise before our view, it is presumed, 
with somewhat of the aspect of sublime mountains ; the 
effect of their appearing in poetry will be as when those 
mountains are seen in the state of volcanoes. But this high 
advantage of the epic poem — its having the province of cele- 
brating a class of events which, in even the humblest style 
of recital, would be exceedingly striking to the imagination — 



EPIC POETRY. 33^ 

is, along with so many other high and prescriptive things, 
totally abolished in the present age. The fall of monarchs, 
the end of a royal race, the catastrophe of empires — what 
solemn phrases these used to be in the lessons of moralists, 
and the declamations of orators ! How many pensive and 
awful reflections were they expected to awaken ! To what a 
remote, and loftj^, and tragical order of ideas were we sup- 
posed to be aspiring M'hen we uttered them ! But the time is 
at length come for such ambitious phrases to express but the 
ordinary events taking place within our sight. We are now 
become accustomed to reckon with great confidence, at the 
beginning of the year, that if we live to the end of it, we 
shall outlive some one or other ancient kingdom that is co- 
existing with us on the first of January. We take not the 
smallest credit for any unusual foresight in the prognostica- 
tion ; and when the event accordingly takes place, it seems 
so much a matter of course that it should have happened, that 
it is not till after a considerable interval of reflection that the 
mind admits any very grave impression of its importance. 
The impression is not so much made by the event itself di- 
rectly, as by our reflective wonder that it has impressed us 
so little. But both our direct and our reflective ideas of the 
magnitude of such an event are soon swept away by that in- 
cessant rapid progress of revolution, which is overturning 
another and still another throne ; destroying the boundaries of 
states ; either reducing those states to the condition of pro- 
vinces of one vast rapacious empire, or supplanting their an- 
cient institutions by new forms and names of government, and 
consigning the hereditary monarchs and their courts to obscu- 
rity and captivity, or driving them to the extremities and 
islands of Europe, or even to the other hemisphere. In this 
career of revolution, war has unfolded all its splendid and 
terrible forms, in such a crowded succession of enterprises 
and battles, with every imaginable circumstance of valour, 
skill, and destruction, that its grandest exhibitions are be- 
come familiar to us, almost to insipidity. We read or talk, 
over our wine or our coffee, of some great battle that has 
recently decided the fate of a kingdom, with an emotion nearly 
as transient as of an old bridge carried away in our neigh- 
bourhood by a flood, or a tree overthrown by the wind or 
struck with lightning. It is, even after every allowance for 
the natural effect of iteration and familiarity, perfectly aston- 
15* 



334 COTTLE S FALL OF CAMBRIA. 

ishing to observe what a degree of indifference has come to 
prevail in the general mind, at the view of events the most 
awful in their immediate exhibition, and the most portentous 
as to their consequences. 

Now it is very evident that this state of the public mind 
must be unfriendly in the extreme, as we began by asserting, 
to the labours and hopes of epic poets. It is the chief object 
of their unfortunate task to excite the sentiments of awe and 
astonishment by the representation of events, for the most 
part, of greatly inferior magnitude to those (of the very same 
class) which are just sutficing to keep up our newspapers and 
annual registers to the competent pitch for amusing us. It is 
true that the poets, by going back several ages for their sub- 
jects, have the advantage of exhibiting their heroes and great 
transactions with that venerable aspect of antiquity which is 
strangely imposing to the imagination ; but this is more than 
counterbalanced in favour of the newspapers by the moment- 
ous and direct relation of the present events to our own in- 
terests. The facts, too, of the epic narrative, instead of 
occupying the mind so as to withdraw its attention from the 
present events, have a quite contrary operation, tending rather 
to reflect its thoughts back to these nearer and greater objects. 
And this reflected attention involves comparison ; which we 
shall be sure to make with a considerable degree of disposi- 
tion to find the transactions of our own more magnificent than 
those of former ages. We shall thus be made to contemplate 
with more attention, and, through a kind of reacting pride, 
with more admiration, the events of the last year or month, 
in consequence of the poet's challenging us with a pompous 
display of the battles and revolutions of remote periods ; so 
that not only we are likely to behave ill to contemporary epic 
poets, but even Homer himself has need of all the sanctity of 
antiquity, and all the surrounding throngs of devotees of every 
time and nation, to protect him against the pert profaneness 
with which we might be tempted to ask, " Where are all your 
conflicts on the Phrygian plain, and what is the fall of Troy, 
compared with what is taking place in our times about once 
every six months 1" The author, then, of the " Fall of Cam- 
bria " will not be surprised to find himself partaking in some 
measure the misfortune which a revolutionary period has 
brought on poets, by rendering what were once accounted 
the most inspiring subjects, vulgar and almost insipid. 



EPIC POETRY. 335 

If this diminution of the interest of heroic poetry had taken 
place from any other cause, it would not perhaps have been 
regretted by a Christian moralist, who feels it quite time that 
the characters and actions which are so pernicious in fact, 
should cease to be attractive in description. The moral effect 
of exhibiting martial excellence in an attractive form would 
be very equivocal, even in a case with the best imaginable 
'conditions. Some of these conditions would be, that the con- 
test should bear the clear evidence of perfect justice on the 
one side, and therefore iniquity on the other ; that the de- 
fenders of the just cause should fight purely from the love of 
justice, not from military glory, as it is called ; that the chiefs 
among these defenders should have so much general virtue, 
that their valour in a just cause should not be the means of 
seducing us into a partiality for some vice in another part of 
the character ; and that the perhaps equally valiant combat- 
ants on the side of injustice should be so represented as to 
become, by means of the other parts of their characters, or 
from the fact of their being on the side of injustice, so decid- 
edly the objects of antipathy, that their bravery, however 
splendid, should conduce nothing towards conciliating us to 
the bad men, and the bad cause. It is doubtful whether a 
careful observance of all these conditions, in a poem which 
should describe with the most animated eloquence (as it might, 
without violating these conditions) the most brilliant achieve^, 
ments of war, would be enough to prevent those achieve- 
ments, so described, from exciting a feeling of more compla- 
cency towards the work of destruction than ought ever to be 
entertained towards it — than it would be strictly moral to en- 
tertain towards it even in a case in which it should be attend- 
ed with all conceivable circumstances of justice. But if the 
moral influence on the reader's mind, from a grand poetical 
celebration cf heroes and heroic exploits, with even perfect 
justice on their side, a celebration, too, conducted with a 
strict regard to all the other conditions above suggested, would 
be at the best equivocal, it is quite needless to ask, what 
must naturally be the influence on his mind from the celebra. 
tion of such wars as have actually made the grandest figure 
in poetry — which poetry has, at the same time, violated all 
the conditions on which it might be just barely pardonable to 
display any, even the most righteous war, in attractive cq« 
lours. 



S36 Cottle's fall of Cambria. 

From the general character of Mr. Cottle's writing, we 
should conclude with confidence, that no poet ever had a high- 
er respect for the purest principles of morality. There is strong 
evidence of this in the present performance. But the subject, 
like almost all such subjects, involved difficulties which no dex- 
terity could overcome. Was the subjugation of Wales by Ed- 
ward the First a just or an unjust achievement 1 If a just one, 
then our feelings are engaged pointedly against justice by our* 
sympathetic interest in the heroic and amiable character of 
the Welsh Prince Llewellyn, and some of his associates, and 
the patriotic and enthusiastic energy of the people. If it was 
unjust— if it was an enterprise of wicked ambition in the mon- 
arch, and wicked loyalty in his chiefs — then is it an immoral 
lenity that we are tempted to exercise towards these workers 
of iniquity, by the magnanimity and generosity which the poet 
frequently makes them display. It is true, he has made some 
of the English leaders very detestable characters ; but still, 
the characters of the men and the enterprise are not so man- 
aged on the whole as to inspire such an entire detestation of 
the undertaking throughout, as we ought to feel if it was an 
iniquitous undertaking. Perhaps indeed the poet felt, and per- 
haps justly felt, that it would be accounted an unpardona- 
ble ^aolation of courtesy and patriotism, to offer to Eng- 
lish readers a work which, in celebrating a great national 
achievement, should represent our own country as atrociously 
in the wrong. But it is a striking disadvantage in the choice 
of a subject, that either justice must be compromised on the 
one hand, or a sentiment so invincible, and accounted so vir- 
tuous, as patriotism, systematically affi-onted on the other. We 
speak on the supposition of the English being, in the instance 
in question, completely in the wrong. — It is another serious 
disadvantage of the present subject, that how much soever the 
English invasion may appear to be in the wrong, it is evident- 
ly to the advantage of both the nations that it should be success- 
ful, this being the only event that could for ever put an end to. 
their wars, and to the savage condition of their border territo- 
ry ; and this also promising to the minor nation incalculable 
advantages in point of progressive knowledge and civilization. 
Thus a civil war is raised among our feelings, some of which 
are imprecating discomfiture and punishment on the invader 
for his ambition, while others are desiring his success in or- 
der to the final pacification of two fiercely conflicting nations. 



EPIC POETRY. 337 

whose strife, it is perfectly evident, will otherwise be cruel 
and perpetual, and in order to the civil improvement of the 
aggrieved state. The poet interests us at every step for the 
success of Llewellyn, over whose final defeat and Avhose death 
we are compelled to mourn, as over the fall of a virtuous hero, 
and a just cause, detesting the royal arm that inflicted the fa- 
tal blow : and yet this sympathy is confounded by our being 
compelled equally to reflect, that the life and victory which 
we wish him, would have been, on the wider scale of human- 
ity, a far greater disaster. 

Against the radical vice of epic poetry, its giving a perni- 
cious fascination to the exploits of war, Mr. Cottle has evi- 
dently laboured earnestly, by endeavouring to throw as much 
of the interest as possible into the subordinate parts of the fa- 
ble, and by occupying an unusually large proportion of the 
work with speeches of the principal personages. Still more 
directly he has done it by taking occasions to introduce, for- 
mally, many solemn reflections on the essential hatefulness of 
war, and the vanity of those martial qualities and feats, to 
which, however, he will in vain admonish those whom Chris- 
tianity in vain admonishes, of the folly of applying such terms 
as glory and immortality. It may be from the meritorious 
singularity of sentiments in perfect unison with the highest 
moral and Christian- principles, in a poem celebrating the ex- 
ploits of heroes, that we are tempted to consider these pas- 
sages as the best, in every sense, in the work. 

There is a great deal to be praised in this poem. The mor- 
al spirit of it, so far as the general exceptions we have before 
made do not interfere, is singularly excellent ; faithful to the 
supreme authority of religion, and favourable to everything am- 
iable and dignified. The serious and pensive reflections 
which form a prominent distinction of the work, are often of 
a kind which the wisest men are most inclined to indulge. 
They sometimes reach a no small degree of abstraction ; they 
indicate a deep sensibility, and an extremely attentive observ- 
ance of its varying emotions. The narration will not perhaps 
be thought sufficiently rapid, but is generally very clear. The 
speeches will be thought much too long, notwithstanding that 
they are employed a good deal in carrying on the narration. 
Taking the narration as a whole, it is in a somewhat more 
settled form, perhaps, than is required in a standard epic ; but 
probably the author might consider himself as privileged in 
virtue of declining that proud title, to allow himself in a looser 



338 Cottle's fall of cambria. 

arrangement of his facts, and a more digressive and episodi- 
cal mode of relating them. He holds himself always at liberty 
to protract the story of any collateral course of transactions as 
long as it will furnish good materials for poetry. Yet we think 
that most of these collateral narrations will be found tending 
towards the main purpose of the story; like streams which, 
while wandering in distinct and even distant fields or valleys, 
are still winding towards a confluence. At the same time 
the fable has much of the simplicity of history ; not attempt- 
ing the intricacy and artifice of construction which distract the 
reader's attention between the bearings of the plot, and the 
intrinsic quality of the successive portions of the composition, 
and which make so much of the interest of the work depend 
on curiosity, that, when once that is satisfied, the work be- 
comes comparatively an object of indifference. — Mr. Cottle 
Clever scruples to suspend the course of events to dilate on the 
moral reflections they have suggested ; or to give time for a 
lengthened lyrical performance by the bards Caradoc or Lhy- 
rarch, (which will not be considered as among the best parts 
of the work ;) or to describe those grand or beautiful scenes of 
nature, which these descriptions prove the author to have con- 
templated with a fixed silent attention, a perception of some- 
thing deeper than shades and colours, a reflective mysticism, 
if we may so call it, and a recognition of an all-pervading 
spirit. No doubt some of the ideas suggested amidst the ima- 
ginative musing, Mdll appear strained and bordering on con- 
ceits ; but many are within the laws of just analogy, while in- 
genious and subtle. Examples of both are found in Lhyrarch's 
*' Song of the Ocean." The poet has given great variety to 
his descriptions, by taking full advantage of the romantic 
scenery in Wales ; as well as of the picturesque array of war 
and fashion of manners in a chivalrous age. As to charac- 
ters, there is such an enormous multitude of heroes going up 
and down throughout all literature, as to have rendered the 
heroic character familiar to the imagination, and to make it 
comparatively easy for the poet to exhibit his personages in 
the correct general shape and features of this character, both 
in its more generous and its more ferocious form. Along with 
this success of general delineation, we think our author has 
reached the higher point of giving to heroes substantially of the 
same order, an individual complexion of character. The poet's 
language is wrought with care, and is in general equally re- 
moved from meanness and classical pomp. 



SUPERSTITIONS OF THE HIGHLANDERS. 339 

XVII. 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE HIGHLANDERS. 



Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland : to 
which are added, Translations from the Gaelic ; and Letters 
connected with those formerly published. By the Author of 
"Letters from the Mouiitains." 

It is a gloomy reflection which occurs to us, in contemplating 
the world as a very picturesque scene, that much the greatest por- 
tion of what man has contributed, and still contributes to make 
it so, is the result and proof of the perverted condition of the 
understanding and morality of the species. If we look at the 
more palpable and material division of the things by which 
that species have given to the world an aspect very striking to 
the imagination, it is False Religion that has raised so many 
superb temples, of which the smallest remaining ruins bear 
an impressive character of grandeur ; that has prompted the 
creation, from shapeless masses of substance, of so many beau- 
tiful or monstrous forms, representing flibulous super-human 
and divine beings ; and that has produced some of the most 
stupendous works intended as abodes, or monuments, of the 
dead. It is the evil next in eminence. War, that has caused 
the earth to be embossed with so many thousands of massy 
structures in the form of towers and defensive walls — so ma- 
ny remains of ancient camps — so many traces of the labours 
by which armies overcame the obstacles opposed to them by 
rivers, rocks, or mountains — and so many triumphal edifices 
raised to perpetuate the glory of conquerors. It is the op- 
pressive Self-importance of imperial tyrants, and of their infe- 
rior commanders of human toils, that has erected those mag- 
nificent residences which make a far greater figure in our 
imagination, than the collective dwellings of the humbler po- 
pulation of a whole continent, and that has in some spots 
thrown the surface of the earth into new forms. Had an en- 



340 grant's superstitions 

lightened understanding and imcorrupt moral principles al- 
ways and universally reigned among mankind, not one of all 
these mighty operations, the labours of unnumbered millions, 
under the impulse and direction of a prodigious aggregate of 
genius and skill, would even have been thought of. Not one 
stone would have been laid of Pagan temple or embattled for- 
tress, of mausoleum, or triumphal arch, or tyrant's palace. 
The ground occupied by the once perfect, and now ruined, 
mansions of the gods at Athens, or Palmj'ra, or Thebes, or 
Rome, the sites of the Egyptian pyramids, of the Roman am- 
phitheatres, and of the palaces of the Alhambra or the Seraglio, 
might, some of them, have been cultivated as useful pieces of 
garden-ground, and some of them covered, from early ages till 
now, with commodious, but not showy, dwellings of virtuous 
families, or plain buildings for the public exercises of the true 
religion. In short, the world would have been a scene incom- 
parably more happy and more morally beautiful, but it would 
have been without a vast multitude of objects that now con- 
spire to make a grand, and even awful, impression on the im- 
agination. 

If we fix our attention on the other class of things contri- 
buted by the human species, to give what we call a pictu- 
esque character to the world — the class supplied by their per- 
sonal condition and manners — we find that in this part also of 
that character the most striking appearances are those which 
manifest error and moral evil. What is it, in this view, that 
most powerfully seizes the imagination ? It is the wild and 
formidable character and habits of savages and barbarians, — 
of North-American Indians, South-Sea Islanders, Arabs, and 
Tartars : It is the monstrous forms of national polity, or of 
subordinate social institution : It is the contrast of the various 
systems of manners, rivals perhaps in absurdity : It is what- 
ever is most pompous, most fantastic, or most vicious, in the 
ceremonial appointments of civilized and uncivilized society: 
It is that ferocious aspect of hostility with which the human 
tribes all over the earth are constantly looking at one another, 
and those dreadful collisions in which myriads are perishing 
every month ; but perhaps, above all, it is their superstitions : 
for these, by their nature, partake more than all the other 
things enumerated, of that solemnity and mystery which have 
so mighty a power over the imagination. 

We now come towards the purpose of this prolix array of 



OF THE HIGHLANDERS. 341 

common places, by the double observation, — that the advance 
of just thinking and right moral principles will, proportiona- 
bly, annihilate a great deal that is very striking and romantic 
in the now existing economy of the human species^ — but that 
we ought to be pleased for these picturesque aspects to vanish, 
if their disappearance be owing to the removal of that intel- 
lectual or moral perversion by which they were produced. 
The complacent feeling here demanded, as a tribute due to 
the excellence of truth and moral rectitude, is, of course, only 
called for at the disappearance of such striking features of the 
world as belong to the latter division, that is, of such as are 
presented in the personal condition and habits of the human 
species, and indicate, so long as they appear, the continued 
operation of the evil causes from which they have arisen. 
For as to those material objects produced by the prevalence 
of evil, and which are so fascinating to the imagination, — the 
pyramids, the ruined temples, and the vast works that remain 
as monuments of former wars, we suppose almost all men 
may agree in wishing they might continue to exist to the latest 
periods of the world, to assist historians in representing, and 
a distant posterity in a happier age in believing, the true state 
of mankind in former periods. But the picturesque forms of 
practical superstition, and of any other thing in the human 
economy which indicates and results from a still operating 
perversion of understanding or moral sentiments, ought not to 
be deplored when they vanish to return no more, — even 
though they were as captivating to the fancy, as comparatiAcly 
innoxious, and combined with as many virtues, half virtues, 
and romantic line qualities, as the superstitions of the High- 
landers of Scotland. 

Our old friend Mrs. Grant is some trifle below our 
standard, on this subject. She acknowledges, with full con- 
viction, that that mode of personal character, (comprising 
notions, moral sentiments, and practical habits,) and that con- 
stitution of the social economy, which should be formed on 
the plain ground of absolute truth generally, and specially on 
the ground of religious truth, perfectly clear of every decep- 
tive fancy, would be better than the very best state of the an- 
cient Highland character and social system. And yet there 
is something so singular, so poetical, and really in some points 
so truly elevated, in the ancient character and economy of 
these Celtic tribes, that she shows a kind of reluctance to lose 



342 grant's superstitions 

any particle that entered into the constitution of so strange 
and interesting a moral order. She cannot help looking back 
with a feeling, perhaps in some slight degree tinged with 
fondness and regret, on some of the more romantic and harm- 
less of the superstitions that once had so visionary and solemn 
an influence. She has somewhat of a similar feeling, in this 
retrospect, to that with which a solitary devotee to contem- 
plation has sometimes beheld the beautiful delusive aspects of 
things by moonlight fading into the plain sober forms of real- 
ity under the commencing ascendency of day-light ; or with 
which a person awaking from an enchanting dream, strives 
to recall the vanishing images, the last glimpse of which 
seems to convey something much finer than the objects ar- 
ranged round the room, or to be seen through the window. 
And we must confess we were scarcely ever in an equal de- 
gree disposed to be forbearing to such a feeling. The 
departed or departing system of sentiments and habits cer- 
tainly did contain a great deal that very powerfully tended to 
fix indelibly a fondly partial impression of almost all its parts 
on a youthful mind of sensibility and poetical enthusiasm, 
when presented to its view amidst that solemn mountain 
scenery, where that system had prevailed so many ages, had 
left so many religiously admitted traditions, and had continued, 
even down to that time, to maintain a very considerable, 
though declining, degree of actual prevalence among the 
people. 

Setting aside historical correctness, we can well believe 
that our author is better qualified than any other person to de- 
lineate a lively picture of the former economy of Highland 
society. She complains, however, that it is now somewhat 
too late. 

It certainly is to be regretted that there had not been, a 
century since, or even at a somewhat later period, just such 
an observer as our author, (saving, perhaps, that a somewhat 
smaller portion of enthusiasm would have sufficed for the ob- 
ject) introduced among the Highland tribes, and domesticated 
for several years among different clans, in order to enter into 
the very recesses of their character and social state, to learn 
their traditionary histories, to preserve the most striking of 
their written and unwritten poetry, to collect characteristic 
anecdotes, to discern the most material differences in the 
general character as appearing among the different sections 



OF THE HIGHLANDERS. 343 

of the people, and then to come away with a comprehensive 
description of what certainly had no parallel among nations, 
and of what, being now in a great measure broken up and 
annihilated, will never return into existence. And that de- 
scription ought to have been given with the same ease and an- 
imation as this before us, — -the same power of presenting such 
moral portraits as will serve as well as if we conversed with 
the real living beings, — the same general and versatile force 
of colouring, — much of the same friendly sympathy with the 
people, — and as little as possible of the same neglect of 
method. 

But our author shows it would, at any time, have been very 
difficult to acquire any intimate knowledge of the character of 
the Highlanders. Between them and the Lowdanders there 
uniformly existed such an active antipathy as to preclude all 
unreserved intercourse. 

The distance of half the circumference of the globe could 
hardly have been more effectual than such a state of neigh- 
bourhood, to keep the best and the most romantic qualities of 
the mountaineers unknown. And any friendly and inquisi- 
tive stranger who should have wished to reside among them, 
would have met, according to Mrs. Grant's very natural re- 
presentation, almost insuperable obstacles. As a transient 
visitor, he would have been received with politeness and hos- 
pitality ; but if attempting to establish himself, he would have 
been regarded as an intruder ; and especially any attempt to 
obtain the smallest particle of land, even if it could have been 
successful, would have excited so strong a hostility, as to 
leave no security either to his property or person. The land 
was not more in any of the districts than to afford moderate 
allotments to the members of the clan, all of whom regarded 
themselves as the family of the chief, and as having therefore 
such claims on him that his granting one acre to a stranger 
would have been a piece of outrageous injustice. 

Nor was any satisfactory information to be obtained con- 
cerning the interior character of this race, from such indivi- 
duals of them as sometimes came among the more southern 
people of the island. For either they came for education, too 
early in life to bring with them either the mature example or 
the knowledge of that character; or, if they came at a more 
advanced age, their quick and proud perception of the lialnlity 
of their most peculiar feelings and superstitions to ridicule 



344 

among a less romantic generation, has put them on the most 
cautious reserve. Some of them have even endeavoured to 
extirpate from their minds the order of sentiments so incom- 
modious, because reputed so irrational, amidst such unconge- 
nial society ; but our author affirms that, once fixed, these 
sentiments became so deep and tenacious, that even though 
the force of the clearest religious truth were also brought in 
aid of the expulsion, and might seem to have effected it, they 
would recover almost all their power if a man happened to re- 
turn to his native region. 

" The moment he felt himself within the stony wirdle of the Grampians, 
though he did not yield himself a prey to implicit belief, and its bewilder- 
ing terrors and fantastic inspirations, still he resigned himself willingly to 
the sway of that potent charm, that mournful, yet pleasing illusion, 
which the combined influence of a powerful imagination and singularly 
w^arm affections have created and preserved in those romantic regions : 
That fourfold band, wrought by music, poetry, tenderness, and melan- 
choly, which connects the past with the present, and the material with 
the immaterial world, by a mystic and invisible tie ; which all born within 
its influence feel, yet none who are free from subjection to the potent spell 
can comprehend. This partial subjection to the early habits of resignation 
to the wildering powers of song and superstition, is a weakness to which 
no educated and polished Highlander will ever plead guilty. It is a 
secret sin, and, in general, he dies without confession; for this good 
reason, that he could not have the least hope of absolution." — Vol. i. p. 36. 

Ten essays make the substance of these volumes ; and our 
first intention was to attempt a slight abstract of them in suc- 
cession ; but their excessively desultory and immethodical 
form has obliged us to decline this attempt. In a large work 
there really would have been no forgiving so irregular a mode 
of managing a subject. In the present instance the space is 
not so wide, but that the reader may traverse again any part 
of it where he imperfectly recollects the curious things that 
were scattered in such plenty and confusion. Taken all to- 
gether, these essays form probably the most just and compre- 
hensive, and beyond all question, the most animated descrip- 
tion of Highland sentiments, manners, and customs, that has 
ever appeared. And the work abounds with what is of supe- 
rior merit and ability to mere picturesque description ; — with 
acute guesses at causes and happy illustrations of principles, — 
and also with pensive and elevated sentiments, sympathetic 
with those v^diich formed the solemn and peculiar grace of the 
mystical and poetical people of whom the work is a worthy 
memorial. 



OP THE HIGHLANDERS. 345 

A. variety of sensible observations are made concerning the 
influences that operated, in a remote age and progressively 
downwards, to promote the growth of so peculiar, and in many 
points so dignihed and attractive a character. Much is justly 
ascribed to the unmingled quality of the race, and consequent 
completeness of fraternity from identity of origin, wdth which 
they took possession of their mountains and glens, as a long 
asylum from the encroaching power of the southerns : to the 
still more concentrated recognition and spirit of kindred, the 
almost family economy and charities, into which the divisions 
respectively were compressed in their several valleys : to the 
spirit of independence which formed them all to heroism, 
through each successive generation, in defending their moun- 
tain territory : to their pride in a long unbroken line of 
honourable ancestry, to w^iich they were most solicitous and 
ambitious to be honourably added, in the retrospect of their 
own distant posterity ; and to the gloomy and sublime charac- 
ter of the region they inhabited. Music and heroic songs 
contributed at once to augment and to combine the influences 
of all these causes. 

These particulars, as illustrated in a very spirited manner 
by the essayist, will go far towards accounting for the moral 
phenomena of the Highlands ; but will still, we think, leave 
a considerable degree of mystery resting on the origin of 
some of the distinctions of the character in question. Much 
of a similar process has taken place with respect to other 
tribes of mankind without producing the same result. How, 
especially, is to be explained that refined and reflective pen- 
siveness so prevalent among these tribes — if we are to 
admit the fidelity of our author's representation, and if there 
be any thing genuine, in point of moral spirit, in the poetry 
attributed to Ossian 1 It is easy enough to comprehend that 
habits of warlike passion, enterprise, and hazard, — that the 
frequent employment of chasing and killing the wild animals 
of the mountains, — that the gloomy impressions of a bold and 
gigantic but most dreary scenery, — and the combination with 
all these of the memory or traditions of brave ancestors, and 
of dark fancies about the haunting of their ghosts, might well 
have produced a certain fierce and austere solemnity, such as 
that which throws a frowning shade over the character of the 
heroes of Odin, as represented in what has come to us of the 
northern poetry, or such as that which has been found among 
some of the American aborigines. But really it is not yet 



346 

explained how this division of the Celtic barbarians acquired 
the tender melancholy, the pensive sublimity, the affectionate 
enthusiasm which, as far as yet appears, we must be con- 
strained to attribute to them in such a degree as to no other 
uncultivated race. 

Th« Essayist has made a strong and pleasing representa- 
tion of the general good sense, thoughtfulness, and habits of 
shrewd and vigilant observation, of the Highlanders ; and 
has shown that their local circumstances and their social con- 
dition very strongly called forth their thinking faculties. The 
comparatively little, though to them most important affairs of 
their valley and their clan, may indeed appear to furnish but 
a narrow scope for the exercise of those faculties, and of that 
conversational and deliberative oratory in which also they 
are here pronounced to have excelled : but our author has 
shown that this confined sphere did, notwithstanding, include 
a very considerable diversity of such occasions as demanded, 
each, a specitic judgment and plan of action. She has re- 
presented, too, that while these tribes were secluded in com- 
plete ignorance of all the knowledge and literature of the 
world, it is wonderful how much truth of a moral and practi- 
cal kind had been struck out among them by the co-operation 
and collision of their own minds, and fixed as a permanent 
common stock by the most faithful traditionary preservation. 

Our author has enlarged also, with great animation, on the 
social virtues of these tribes, — the well governed temper and 
passions, the promptitude to friendly mutual services, (within 
the boundary of the clan,) the matrimonial fidelity, and that 
lofty sense of honour entertained by even the meanest mem- 
bers of the community. And she has shown how much these 
qualities were promoted by their high notions of a dignified 
ancestry, from whose revered character it would be infamous 
to degenerate, and by the consciousness of being, every in- 
dividual of them, at all times within the cognizance, for 
honour or for shame, of the whole clan. 

The superstitions of the Highlanders related chiefly to ap- 
paritions of the dead, and to fairies, of good, bad, and equivo- 
cal character. These simple elements spread, of course, 
into a very wide diversity of particular forms, which our au- 
thor has represented a good deal at large in very lively 
colours, with a variety of curious illustrative anecdotes, many 
of which fell within her own knowledge. 

In looking toward the probable origin of the belief in ap- 



OF THE HIGHLAXDEES. 347 

paritions of the dead, she insists, in opposition to the scornful 
disbelievers in all such phenomena, (which, however, she 
herself appears to consider as being uniformly fallacies of 
imagination) that the belief of such mysterious visitations 
could not have originated Avith minds of the weaker order ; 
and she illustrates, in a very forcible and poetical manner, 
how such a belief w^as likely to originate, and probably did 
originate in very thoughtful minds of powerful imagination 
and deep sensibility. Perhaps, if the plain truth could be 
know n, it would appear to be, that the persuasion did not 
originate in the mere constitution of minds of any class ; but 
in certain real preternatural phenomena in the earliest ages, 
combining and conveying down their effect along with that 
belief in the existence after death, which tradition has dimly 
preserved in almost all barbarous nations. We will, how- 
ever, transcribe a few of the sentences in which she conveys 
her conjectures. 

" During the dim dawn of intelligence, no reason appeared why the 
spirit, still supposed to exist in a separate state, should not still cherish the 
pure affections and generous sentiments which made it lovely and beloved 
while imprisoned in mortality. To such enthusiastic beings as we have 
been contemplating, it could not appear unlikely that spirits so attached 
and so lamented, should assume some semblance of their wonted form 
and countenance ; that they should come in the hour of deep sorrow and 
silent recollection, to soothe the solitary momner, to assist his fond retro- 
spections, and to cheer him with the hopes of a future meeting in some 
state no longer incident to change or separation. The state of mind thus 
pre-supposed, was quite sufficient to give familiar voices to the winds of 
night, and well-known forms to the mists of the morning. Thus it is 
likely that the first apparitions were the offspring of genius and sensi- 
bility, nursed by grief and solitude. These phantoms, however, which 
exalted the musings of the superior order of souls, and lent them wings 
to hover over the obscure abyss of futurity, were not long confined to 
their visionary solitudes. They soon became topics of vulgar discussion 
and popular belief; the fancied forms which were now supposed to people 
solitude, added horror to obscurity, and doubtless gave new terrors to 
guilt."— Vol. i. p. 95. 

A belief in the conscious existence of men after death being 
pre-supposed, this and similar passages W'ould be as plausible, 
as they are a poetical explanation, of the manner in which 
the belief in apparitions might originate among a people of 
the character, and in the stage of early intellectual progress, 
which the Essayist describes. Indeed, with the pre-supposi- 
tion, it is highly probable that in such a state of mind and 



348 grant's superstitions 

society the belief really icould originate, and in this manner, 
if it had not existed already in a still more primitive period 
of the world. But such a belief could not have failed to be- 
come established in that more primitive age in consequence 
of the notorious occasional intervention and appearance of 
spiritual agents, which we have cause to be assured was no 
very infrequent expedient in the divine government, in the 
periods antecedent to the existence of a written revelation. 
If even but a very few instances of such preternatural inter- 
vention took place, in the parent nation of mankind, the pos- 
sibility of spectral manifestations would be one of the most 
fixed notions among all the branches into which that nation 
extended and divided ; a notion that probably could never be 
so far obliterated as that its existence among the Celtse, or 
any other people, may rationally be attributed to the inven 
live conception of minds in a state of pensive enthusiasm 
The general belief of a future state would powerfully con 
tribute to preserve this notion uninterruptedly in existence 
We repeat, however, that this high probability of the prime 
val origin of the notion in question, does not forbid us to ad 
mit, in such an enthusiastic state of mind as the author de 
scribes, a comj)etent creative energy to originate the idea and 
the belief, in minds previously entertaining a persuasion of a 
conscious existence after death. Some of our author's ex- 
pressions seem to imply, that even this latter belief also might 
have sprung up spontaneously amidst the solemn enthusiastic 
emotions of heathen and barbarous minds. But neither M^as 
this great truth originally left by the Creator to the chance 
of being or not being inventively apprehended by the human 
mind, nor can we admit that without revealed intimations it 
ever would have been so conceived as to become a prevailing 
belief among mankind. 

The ancient occupiers of the Highlands having doubtless 
brought with them the belief of separate spirits both existing 
and appearing, it is easy to comprehend that in such a coun- 
try, and such a state of the social feelings, the instances of 
this supposed appearance would become frequent, and would 
be with an aspect and circumstances of a deeply melancholy 
character. When the scene of their training to the belief 
and expectation of apparitions was a wild and solemn region, 
— with vast mountain solitudes, lofty or fantastic summits, 
deep darkened glens, torrents and cataracts, rocks, precipices, 



OF THE HIGHLANDERS. 349 

caverns and echoes, mists, meteors, and storms ; and when 
some of the occupations of some of the seasons involved 
considerable peril ; and when, besides, each gloomy or dan- 
gerous locality by degrees acquired its tradition of being the 
scene of some mysterious occurrence ; the efiect could hardly 
fail to be, that their minds would be kept in that imaginative 
state, in which, while undefended by knowledge, they would 
be subject to endless illusions, and chiefly of a gloomy kind. 
And then, as our author so repeatedly represents, the state of 
the community and the social affections, — the cherished me- 
mory of a common and revered ancestry, — and that secluded, 
compressed, and reciprocally dependent condition of each 
tribe, which produced a more warm and faithful sentiment of 
fraternity even than that so often observed in uncultivated 
small nations, and which followed with enthusiastic and inex- 
tinguishable tenderness each departed relative and associate, 
— would powerfully contribute to retain, in Higliland appre- 
hension, the spirits of the departed friends as a shadowy but 
sometimes visible adjunct to the living community. And 
their conversations and their poetry would turn very often on 
this solemn subject, and on the supposed particular instances 
which had given almost every man, in his own apprehension, 
a kind of practical knowledge and interest in it. Neverthe- 
less, it is asserted by some who have paid attention to such 
remains as have been preserved of the genuine poetry of the 
ancient Highlanders, that they contain nothing like that ex- 
cessiv^e frequency of ghosts, which has made their appear- 
ance quite a vulgar and unimpressive phenomenon in the 
poetic fabrication of Macpherson. 

As examples of the mode and affecting circumstances of 
these supernatural interventions, the Essayist has introduced 
two striking poetical stories, one from the Death of Gaul, 
*'a poem," she says, ^^ of undoubted antiquity."* But after 
all that has been written, and all poetical relics that have 
been produced, it still appears impossible to form any distinct 
idea of the mode of subsistence, and the degree and kind of 
knowledge, power, or happiness, attributed by these Celtic 
tribes to separate spirits. No comprehensive and systematic 

* This is rather indiscreet, as Mr. Laing has pronounced it to be of re- 
cent workmanship : we do not know whether his challenge to the editor 
to produce any good evidence that it was not written by himself, baa 
been accepted or not. 
16 



350 GRANT S SUPERSTITIOIVS 

economy of their condition seems to have been matured by 
their poets. The rude conception of their existence seems 
to keep them in being, rather that they may not be lost to 
the survivors, and that there may be society for those sur- 
vivors to go to when they also shall depart, than to regard 
them as existing for their own sake, in an independent and a 
dignified economy. Nor could it seem that they were re- 
garded as in possession of any very animated kind of happi- 
ness ; which is rather strange, when we consider the ardent 
affection with which departed friends were remembered, and 
the lively interest with which the survivors are represented 
as anticipating their own removal into the disembodied so- 
ciety. This deficiency of attraction in the state of the sepa- 
rate spirits strikes us so forcibly, that, though it will be al- 
lowed that such a people might feel much interest in the 
thought of rejoining their dead friends in any state not posi- 
tively unhappy, yet we may very reasonably doubt whether 
the complacency in the view of death could be so much a 
thing of course as is implied in the following passage, — if the 
representation is to be understood of a time antecedent to the 
introduction of Christianity. 

•'This army of ghosts, that constantly hovered round those that mourn- 
ed for them, and kept alive both their affection and their enthusiasm, had 
a two-fold effect upon the general character of the people. It was favour- 
able to courage : as death, which did not put an end to existence, and re- 
united them to their departed friends, could have nothing very terrible in 
it ; and it strengthened attachment, because the deceased were not only 
ever present to the memory, but supposed to be often obvious to the 
senses. The beloved object, who not only dwelt in the soul of tho 
mourner, but seemed ever hovering round, with fond impatience, to watch 
the moment of the union, became if possible, more endeared than ever.** 
—Vol. i. p. 113. 

It was, however, very necessary that these pensive and 
visionary mountaineers should be in some good measure 
habitually willing to quit the society of the living for that of 
the dead ; as, else, their living so close on the frontier of the 
world of spirits, and with so slight a barrier between, must 
have been felt a very oppressive privilege ; — ^for it should 
seem that the imagined appearances and voices of their de- 
parted friends most generally communicated warnings of ap- 
proaching death. And it is to be observed, that these com- 
munications from departed spirits have, in the representation, 
a very mournful character, on the part of both the beings by 



OF THE HIGHLANDERS. 351 

wKoni, and the persons to whom, they are made. The forms 
imagined to be seen are not only of shadowy and ominous 
aspect, but also have an expression of desolateness, languor, 
and melancholy: the voices, though soft and sweet, have a 
tone, and convey expressions, strongly allied to pensive sor- 
row ; and emotions partaking, in full sympathy, of this mourn- 
ful quality, are generally represented as excited in those to 
whom the solemn communication is made. In short, if the 
quality and effect of these supernatural visitings are at all 
correctly represented to us,—- we do not say by the poems 
given us under the name of Ossian, so very large a portion 
of which may confidently be ascribed to Macpherson, — but 
by Mrs. Grant and two or three contemporary admirers and 
interpreters of the Celtic muse ; it is impossible to avoid the 
conviction, that there was not a predominance of happy feel- 
ing in the sentiments which the ancient Highlanders enter- 
tained, concerning their relation with the world of spirits. In 
this respect their mythology, so to call it, while of so much 
more pathetic a cast than what we chiefly know of the Scan- 
dinavian, appears greatly inferior for animating excitement. 
The Hall of Odin, with its lively and heroic company, and its 
revels, presented much more palpable and inspiriting forms 
of delight, of however rude a quality, than any thing we are 
told of among the feeble and pensive shades on the misty 
hills of the Highlands. 

But it was not, as we have already mentioned, by departed 
and friendly spirits alone that the people of these tribes were 
continually haunted. There were fairies of sundry classes, 
defined or undefined : there were even malignant goblins, 
exceedingly watchful, and very considerably powerful, to do 
mischief. An ample portion of the work is employed in de- 
scribing the kinds of injury they were most inclined or per- 
mitted to inflict, illustrated with a number of curious examples, 
selected from the ample stores that enrich the traditions of 
every glen and tribe. The longest and most curious story, 
that of a man who by regular appointment which he was 
most conscientious to keep, met and fought a number of times, 
an evil spirit, at midnight, in the most gloomy place in the 
whole country, is as good as any section Ave remember in the 
romances of mystery and terror. Our author must be sensible 
she has left it quite unexplained, and that some odd particulars 
of acknowledged fact in it really called for explanation. — She 



352 grant's superstitions 

recounts many of the ceremonies of precaution without which, 
even in modern times, after the prevalence of Christianity 
among them, (though, indeed, in an extremely imperfect form,) 
for so many ages, the Highlanders did not deem themselves 
or their friends secured against the power and spite of the 
supernatural agents of evil. We may transcribe as a speci- 
men, the account of the ritual for defending an infant and its 
mother. 

" The first danger to be guarded against was the power of fairies, in 
taking away the infant or its molher ; who were never considered as en. 
tirely safe till the one was baptized, and the other had performed her devo- 
tions at some chapel or consecrated place. All the powers of darkness, 
and even those equivocal sprites, who did good or evil as they happened to 
be inclined, were supposed to yield instantly before the power of a reli- 
gious rite, or even a solemn invocation of the Deity. 

" But, then, the danger was, that one might be carried off in sleep. Sound 
orthodoxy would object to this, — that the same power guards us waking 
and asleep. This argument would not in the least stagger a Highland 
devotee. He would tell you, that till these sacred rites, which admit the 
child, and readmit the mother, into the church, were performed, both were 
in a state of impurity, which subjected them (the body, not the soul) to 
the power of evil spirits; and that it was the duty of the friends of such to 
watch them during their sleep, that, on the approach of evil spirits (who 
never came unseen) they might adjure them, m the holiest name, to de- 
part : which they never failed to do when thus repelled. If these vigilant 
duties were neglected, the soul of the abstracted person might be saved, 
but his friends, in the privation they sustained, suffered the due punish- 
ment of their negligence of what was at once a duty of affection and re- 
ligion. If, however, they were not able or willing to watch, or wished for 
a still greater security, the bed, containing the mother and the infant, 
was drawn out on the floor ; the attendant took a Bible, and went thrice 
round it, waving all the time the open leaves, and adjuring all the ene- 
mies of mankind, by the power and virtue contained in that book, to fly 
instantly into the Red Sea, &c. After this ceremony had been gone 
through, all slept quiet and safely : yet it was not accounted a proof of 
diligent attachment to have recourse to this mode of securing a night's 
rest to the watcher. 

" When the infant was secured by the performance of this hallowed 
rite from all risk of being carried away, or exchanged for a fairy, there 
was still an impending danger, which it required the utmost vigilance of 
mistaken piety to avert. This was not only the well-known dread of an 
evil eye, which, by a strange coincidence, is to be traced, not only in every 
country, in the first stage of civilization, but in every age of which any 
memorials are preserved : there was, besides this, an indistinct notion, 
that it was impious and too self dependent to boast of the health or beauty 
of any creature, rational or irrational, that seemed to belong to us." [The 
evil which would be incurred by boasting of the health or beauty of a 
child was] " no less than that of leaving the defenceless babe at the mercy 
of evil eyes and evil spirits, to be instantly deprived of the vigour, or the 



or THE HIGHLANDERS. 353 

bloom and symmotry so admired. An infant, in short, was not to be 
praised at all, without a previous invocation of the Deity." — Vol. i. 
p. I(i5. 

Our essayist represents, that a large portion of the super- 
stitions entertained by these tribes when pagans, Ijecame 
incorporated witli Christianity on its introduction, and under 
tin's union and sanction continued to prevail to a very late 
period, indeed to the present day in some of the most retired 
parts of the Highlands. She observes, that their solemn 
notions and habitual impressions concerning separate spirits, 
were adapted to facilitate the admission of some grand doc- 
trines of Christianity, coalescing with them rather than being 
supplanted by them ; so that, in fact, the faith of the early 
Christians in th« Highlands respecting a future state, con- 
sisted substantially of pagan elements, methodized, exalted, 
and enlarged, by that very limited share which their teachers 
could impart to them of the light of revelation. — When popery 
at length made its way, though imperfectly, among them, it 
introduced into their Christianity more, if not worse, super- 
stions than Christianity had expelled from their primitive 
paganism. 

A somewhat disproportionate degree of anxiety and labour 
appears to have been felt and exercised on a topic to M^hich 
our author returns again and again, namely, the great moral 
benefits derived by these tribes, both in their heathen con- 
dition, and amidst the very feeble and slowly progressive light 
of revealed truth through subsequent ages, from their super- 
stitious notions respecting spirits. She represents in how 
many ways it may be hoped these delusions were salutary, — 
how they raised barbarians above the grossness incident to 
their condition, — how they afterwards did substantially some 
things which pure Christianity was not yet grown strong 
enough among them to do, — and how they supplied the de- 
ficiencies of an extremely imperfect and unauthoritative le- 
gislation. We do not see that the reasonings on this point 
amount to much more than this very plain and undeniable 
proposition, — that as far as the superstition concerning ghosts 
gave additional power to conscience, in enforcing such just 
moral principles as the people had the knowledge of, so far, 
and relatively to the matter of fact merely, it was useful. It 
was clearly thus practically useful when, to take one of our 
author's illustrations, a man was deterred from committing a 



354 grant's superstitions 

murder by the fear of the haunting and vengeance of the ghost, 
or from being a dishonest or cruel guardian to the children 
of persons deceased, by the apprehension of an affrighting 
visit from the spirits of the parents. Just in the matter of 
fact the operation of the superstition was obviously good : but 
was it good — must it not have been in many ways pernicious 
— for the mind to be under the persuasion that the ghosts of 
men were the governors of the world, and the sovereign dis- 
pensers of retribution 1 But more than this ; our author 
herself is candid enough to observe, that some of the opera- 
tions of the superstition, in at least the pagan period, were 
extremely pernicious in the simple matter of fact. 

It is also evident from our author's statements, that, besides 
imposing the fetters and incumbrance of many frivolous and 
irrational ceremonies, the superstition of the Highlanders has 
in spite of the beneficent light of Christianity, given a de- 
formed and gloomy aspect to the providential government of 
the Avorld, as beheld by them. Of this there needs no other 
proof than the fact, as stated by her, that they had, in rather 
recent times, such a fearful unremitting impression of the 
vigilant haunting of evil spirits, that it was presumption for a 
person to go out alone in the night. 

On the whole, while admiring, perhaps nearly as much as 
our animated author, the many fine romantic features in this 
most singular economy, we sincerely rejoice that a system of 
notions and habits which involved so much unhappy super- 
stition, Avith such a peculiar power (from the constitution and 
local situation of the community) of permanently retaining 
it, is breaking up and passing away. On the cause of this 
great change, a cause little enough to be sure, directly related 
to Christianity or intellectual philosophy, our author has many 
very sensible and interesting observations toward the con- 
clusion of these essays. We need not say the cause is, the 
adoption, by the great Highland proprietors, of a new, and to 
themselves more profitable, use of the land. The system 
which supported and kept together each clan, as a little tribe 
united by the affections and interests, and indeed by the actual 
relationships of a large family — that of numerous small allot- 
ments of land, partly cultivated for grain — has been generally 
relinquished, by what would formerly have been called the 
chieftains of clans. Much of their ancient feudal consequence 
and authority, and some portion perhaps of the affectionate 



OF THE HIGHLANDEES. 355 

and romantic devotedness of their dependent clans, had been 
already lost, through the effectual interference of government 
to open and subjugate the Highlands, after the events of 1745. 
And by degrees the chiefs have come almost unanimously into 
the plan of living in style in the great cities, like other people 
of consequence, and drawing the greatest possible revenue 
from their mountain tracts ; and this greatest revenue is found 
to be realized by giving up the whole to pasturage, especially 
of sheep. Consequently, a large portion of the inhabitants 
have been compelled to emigrate, to seek subsistence in the 
Lowlands or in America. The latter is naturally chosen by 
all who can afford the expense of the passage ; and great 
numbers have already become diligent cultivators in the 
United States, or within the limits of the English Canadian 
territory. There, however, our author asserts, they will not 
preserve their high enthusiastic and romantic sentiments ; 
but there, then, we presume they will, fortunately, forget by 
degrees their superstitions. Benevolence would wish that 
they might there also speedily let their language fall into 
disuse ; for how are they ever to obtain their desirable share 
of knowledge, while strangers to all the languages in which 
knowledge has been accumulated and circulated in the 
civilized world ? 



S56 ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHT. 



XVIIL 
ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY 



Ecclesiastical Biography ; or Lives of eminent Men, connected 
with tlie History of Religion in tmgland ; from the Com,' 
mencement of the Reformation to the Revolution ; selected, 
and illustrated with Notes. By Chkistophek Words- 
worth, M. A., Dean and Rector of Booking, and Domes- 
tic Chaplain to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

Little more will be needful, for the purpose of explaining 
the nature and adjudging the value of this work, than to speci- 
fy the materials of which it is compiled. The articles con- 
cerning Wickliffe, Thorpe, Bilney, Tindall, Lord Cromwell, 
Rogers, Hooper, Rowland, Taylor, Latimer, and Cranmer^ 
are compiled from Fox's Acts and Monuments. That con- 
cerning Lord Cobham is partly from Fox, and partly from 
Bale's Brief Chronicle. The account of Ridley is partly from 
Fox, and partly from a life of the bishop, by Dr. Gloucester 
Ridley, published in 1763. The highly entertaining life of 
Woolsey, by the Cardinal's Gentleman Usher, Cavendish, is 
here for the first time faithfully printed from a manuscript in 
the Lambeth Library, collated m ith another manuscript in that 
library, and a manuscript of the same life in the library of the 
Dean and Chapter of York Cathedral. This performance, 
indeed, appeared in print long since, and was reprinted in the 
Harleian Miscellany, but so altered and spoiled in almost 
every sentence, by some foolish editor, as to bear but little re- 
semblance to the genuine exemplar. The long life of Sir 
Thomas More is now first published from a manuscript in 
the Lambeth Library, written towards the end of the reign of 
Elizabeth, by a zealous papist. Walton's lives of Hooker, 
Donne, Herbert, Sir Henry Wotton, and Bishop Sanderson, 
are reprinted entire, with additions by Strype to the life of 



ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 357 

Hooker. There are reprinted entire a life of Jewel, prefixed 
to an English edition, in 1685, of his Apology of the Church of 
England ; the translation, published in 1G29, of Bishop Carle- 
ton's life, in Latin, of Bernard Gilpin ; Sir George Paule's 
life of Archbishop Whitgift ; Bishop Fell's life of Dr. Ham- 
mond ; Burnet's life of Sir Matthew Hale ; Matthew Henry's 
life of his father, Philip Henry ; and Burnet's " Passages of 
the Life and Death of the Earl of Rochester." The "Me- 
moirs of Nicholas Ferrar," by Dr. Peckard, published in 1790, 
are here reprinted, "but not without some omissions." The 
account of this most extraordinary man and his extraordinary 
nephew, is in this republication extended by the accession of 
some curious papers relating to them, found in Lambeth Li- 
brary, though supposed liy Dr. Peckard to have been lost. 
The life of Bishop Hall is " composed principally from a re- 
publication of two of his tracts," "Observations of some spe- 
cialties of Divine Providence," and " Hard Measure." The 
account of Baxter is composed of extracts from his "Life and 
Times." The lite of Tillotson is abridged from a memoir of 

him "by F. H , M. A.," published in 1717, which Mr. 

Wordsworth professes to hold in no very high esteem. 

The work is inscribed, in profoundly reverential terms, to 
the Primate ; and will not, we hope, have offended the modes- 
ty insepara!)le from the highest ecclesiastical dignity, by Ije- 
traying to the public that his Grace's " unceasing cares and la- 
bours" are directed to the "promotion of pure taste, good mo- 
rals, and true religion." It is affirmed, that his Grace's many 
acts of munificence for the increase of the literary treasures 
of his country, exalt his name to the same level with those of 
the most illustrious of his predecessors, Cranmer, and Parker, 
and Laud." It may be doubted whether Archbishop Tillot- 
son would have felt the attributed resemblance in this subor- 
dinate species of episcopal merit sufficiently flattering to atone 
for the associating of his name in any way with those of the 
"illustrious" Parker and Laud : and we presume our editor 
cannot have studied, so accurately as he ought, his patron's 
taste in ecclesiastical character and in language. 

A sensible preface explains the compiler's motives to the 
undertaking. Every one will accord to his opinion, as to the 
necessary and happy influence of the college and the archi- 
episcopal palace in kindling pure Christian zeal. He ob- 
serves, " a protracted residence iu either of our universities, 
16* 



35S ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 

and afterwards in that service which I have mentioned, it will 
easily be understood, was likely to engage any man in ardent 
wishes and desires for the general prosperity and welfare of 
sincere piety and true religion," and to inspire him more par- 
ticularly with an earnest concern " that these most important 
interests should ever advance and flourish among our theo- 
logical students and the clergy ; and, through their means 
and labours, with the divine blessing, in every rank of socie- 
ty." It was but in obedience, therefore, to the cogently 
evangelical influence which is always operating within the 
walls of a university, and in emulation of the active piety 
which he observed in every person who had resided there a 
considerable time, that Mr. Wordsworth projected, during a 
long-continued residence at Cambridge, a work of the nature 
of that now before us. The official situation which has since 
given him access to the Lambeth Library, must obviously 
have afforded him many facilities for the execution of the de- 
sign ; and he has availed himself of them with a very laudable 
industry. 

The editor assigns good reasons why the series should not 
commence earlier than the "preparations towards a Reforma- 
tion by the labours of Wicklifte and his followers," nor be 
brought down lower than the Revolution. 

The space so limited, formed in our island the grand milita- 
ry age of Christianity, during which the substance and the 
forms of that religion were put in a contest which exhausted 
the possibilities of human nature. The utmost that could be 
attained or executed by man, in point of piety, sanctity, cour- 
age, atrocity, and intellectual energy, vv^as displayed during 
this warfare. The compiler justly thought that nothing could 
be more interesting than a fair exhibition, presented in the per- 
sons of the leading combatants, of the principles and the most 
signal facts of that great contest. And this is very effectually 
done, as to that part of it which lay between the church of 
Rome and the protestants ; but not so satisfactorily as to that 
part of it which was maintained between the English estab- 
ment and the puritans. 

The editor's preference of original authorities, and his for- 
bearance to alter their expressions or even their orthography, 
will obtain the marked approbation, we should think, of every 
sensible reader. He says, 



ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 359 

'* It will be found, (for which, I imagine, no apology is necessary,) that 
I have preferred the ancient and original authorities, where they could be 
procured, before modern compilations and abridgments ; the narratives, 
for instance, of Fox and Carlcton, before the more artificial compositions 
of Gilpin. — 'Neither do I think it will require any excuse with the judicious 
reader, that in the early parts of the series, I have been at some pains to 
retain the ancient orthography. It was one advantage which I contem- 
plated in projecting this compilation, that it would afford, by the way, 
some view of the progress of the English language, and of English compo- 
sition. This benefit would have been greatly impaired by taking away 
the old spelling. But I have always thought that the far more solemn in- 
terests of reality and truth are also, in a degree, violated by that practice. 

" The reader is desired further to observe, that in many cases, the lives 
are republished from the originals, entire, and without alteration ; but in 
others the method pursued has been different. Wherever the work before 
me seemed to possess a distinct character as such, either for the beauty of 
its composition, the conveniency of its size, its scarcity, or any other suf- 
ficient cause, I was desirous that my reader should have the satisfaction 
of possessing it complete : but where these reasons did not exist, I have 
not scrupled occasionally to proceed otherwise : only, in regard to altera- 
tions, it is to be understood, that all which I have taken the liberty of 
making are confined solely to omissions. Thus, the lives written by Isaak 
Walton are given entire, and I have inserted all that he published : but 
the accounts of Ferrar and Tillotson have been shortened. 

" Many of the lives which are given from Fox's Acts and Monuments^ 
and which the editor looks upon as among the most valuable parts of his 
volumes, are brought together and compiled from distant and disjoined 
parts of that very extensive work ; a circumstance of which it is necessary 
that any one should be informed, who may wish to compare these narra- 
tives with the originals. It will be found also that in many places much 
has been omitted ; and that a liberty has not unfrequently been taken of 
leaving out clauses of particular sentences, and single coarse and gross 
terms and expressions, especially such as occurred against papists. But, 
though he has not all Fox laid before him, yet the reader may be assured 
that all which he has is Fox." 

" In the notes which I have added, my aim has been occasionally ta 
correct my author ; but much more frequently to enforce his positions and 
illustrate him, and that especially in matters relating to doctrines, opinions, 
manners, language, and characters. Their number might easily have 
been increased, but I was unwilling to distract the reader's eye from the 
object before him, except where I thought some salutary purpose might be 
answered." — Preface, p. xiv. 

After expressing his desire to promote by this work the in- 
terests of Christianity in general, he acknowledges it would 
not be a mistake, if any one should surmise that he wishes to 
promote it especially as " professed within the pale of the 
Church of England," being persuaded that its advancement 
under that specific modification will conduce most to the pros- 
perity of the universal church. He adds, 



S60 ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 

" And yet, if he could any where have found popery associated with 
greater piety and heavcnly-mindedncss than in Sir Thomas More, or non- 
conformity united with more Christian graces than in Philip Henry, those 
examples also should have obtained their station in this work." " It has 
then been no part of my design to give occasion of offence to any. — If 
indeed occasion be taken where none was intended to be given ; if the 
errors and the evil practices of popery, the truths of protestantism, the 
sufferings of martyrs and confessors, and the intolerance and cruelty of 
persecutors ; if the madness of fanatics, and the evils of civil and religious 
war, ca7inot be described and deplored without blame ; if the wisdom to 
be derived to present and future ages from the records of the past, cannot 
be obtained by ourselves, without exciting displeasure in other bosoms ; 
there may be circumstances which shall call forth our concern and sorrow 
for the pain of a suffering fellow-creature ; but the consequences must be 
endured, as no part of our design, but only accidental to it ; and the com- 
plainant may bear to be admonished, whether, instead of casting harsh 
imputations upon us, he would not be better employed in re-examining the 
grounds and principles of his own faith, and inquiring whether cause has 
not been afforded to him of rendering thanks and praise to the mercy of 
God, for giving him yet another call and summons to escape from error 
and forsake his sin." — Preface, p. xviii. 

There is something which we do not perfectly understand in 
this last paragraph. Why does Mr. Wordsworth expect to 
*' excite displeasure" and incur " harsh imputations ?" In 
what character does he view himself, as connected with this 
publication ? If Messrs. Rivingtons, the publishers of the 
work, had chosen, without the intervention of any ostensible 
editor, to have a new edition printed of Ridley's Life of Rid- 
ley, Walton's Lives, Sir G. Panic's Life of Whitgift, dec. &;c. 
they would never have dreamed of provoking displeasure, and 
having to endure harsh imputations ; and why should Mr. 
Wordsworth ? Surely he is not making himself the responsi- 
ble voucher for the truth and discretion of everything in these 
six volumes, and pledginghimself to the vindication of whatev- 
er in them may be of a nature to offend the popish and pro- 
testant non-conformists to the church of England. With re- 
spect, at least, to that large proportion of the work which is 
given as an accurate reprint of entire memoirs, it was quite 
needless for him to take on himself any responsibility, beyond 
the very small degree involved in choosing those particular 
memoirs in preference to memoirs of some of the same per- 
sons written by other authors. A somewhat difierent rule of 
accountableness, indeed, may be applied to those parts which 
consist of comparatively short extracts from large works, as in 
the articles compiled from Fox's book, and that concerning 



ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 861 

Baxter, composed of passages from his own history of his life 
and times ; and also to those articles which are slightly abridg- 
ed from the original memoirs merely by some omissions, as in 
the Lives of Ferrar and Tillotson. In compiling articles in 
this manner, a certain, though not very definable measure of 
responsibility does attach to the editor ; since, though he 
should engage that every sentence is in the precise words of 
the original authorities, he may have followed such a rule of 
selection and omission as will produce an unfair representation 
of the subjects or characters. With respect to this portion of 
the compilation, therefore, it Avould not have been amiss for 
Mr. Wordsworth to have briefly stated what may have been 
his leading rule of selection, especially in the article drawn 
from Baxter's history. In the construction of this article, in- 
deed, the reader instantly perceives one rule to have been, to 
omit all record of Baxter's memorable campaigns against ec- 
clesiastical intolerance. This rule of compilation might have 
been ingenuously avowed by Mr. Wordsworth ; and it would 
have been taken in good part by the candid and considerate 
reader, who would have been very iar from exacting of the 
archbishop cf Canterbury's chaplain, an endeavour to give 
additional notoriety to the controversies and sufferings of the 
champion of the non-conformists. Only it would have been 
justly insisted, that, while adopting such a rule of omission, he 
should forbear all claims to have his work received as contain- 
ing the substance of the history of religion in England during 
the seventeenth century ; this being no admissible pretension 
for a work, which exhibits at great length the public proceed- 
ings, the ecclesiastical maxims, and the most laboured eulo- 
giums, of the distinguished high-churchmen, and reduces down 
to a diminutive sketch of personal character the ample story of 
the Hercules of non-confoimity. Let this ill judged preten- 
sion have been forborne, and a man in Mr. Wordsworth's 
double ecclesiastical capacity would have excited no very 
great " displeasure," or " harsh imputations," by omitting, in 
a memoir of Baxter, all Baxter's relations of the perscutions he 
suffered, of the silencing of two thousand conscientious minis- 
ters, and of the conference at the Savoy. Thus guarding 
against any heavy censure on his partial ju'inciple of selection 
in compiling the memoirs which were to be composed of a 
small extracted portion of large works, he might have exone- 
rated himself in ten words from all responsibility on account 



362 ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 

of the lives reprinted entire and unaltered. He had only to 
say, that in their time they had obtained, in a greater or less 
degree, the public sanction, as the best or the most agreeably 
written memoirs of the persons they celebrate ; and that they 
are put to stand on the ground of their own merits, just as 
much on this republication, as on their first appearance. 

Readers, the most irritably fraught with sectarian captious- 
ness, could easily be made to comprehend, that if several 
biographers of note in the seventeenth century assumed some 
principles which these readers believe to be false, or at least 
very questionable, and threw a partial colouring over the 
characters and transactions they described, it is no fault of 
Mr. Wordsworth ; and that in rendering to the public what 
will be on all hands acknowledged an acceptable service, by 
republishing these noted, curious, and now scarce perform- 
ances, he would have greatly injured the credit of the new 
edition, if he had destroyed the integrity of the works by 
omitting or modifying a single paragraph for the purpose of 
correcting injustice or avoiding offence. So far, therefore, 
as the passage we have extracted can be construed to refer 
to the contest between the ecclesiastical establishment and 
the puritans and sectaries, we are quite at a loss for the mean- 
ing and object of that sort of solemn preparation of Christian 
fortitude, that air of resignation to the imperious dictates of 
conscience at all costs and hazards, which seem so oddly act- 
ing or mocking the character of a confessor. This would be 
intelligible, on the supposition of Mr. Wordsworth's consid- 
ering a person who furnishes notes to a new edition of a work, 
as necessarily personating the author, and avowing and war- 
ranting every thing advanced in the work, unless corrected 
in his notes. But it is impossible our editor can choose to 
make himself responsible, for instance, for the whole strain 
of representation in the lives by Walton ; a pleasing writer, 
certainly, but no more a historian, in the most respectable 
sense, than he was a mineralogist. From the moment he 
has pronounced the name of his subject, it seems absolutely 
put out of his power to recollect that his favourite was of the 
posterity of Adam, till it comes to be acknowledged, towards 
the last page, that the personage could not be exempted from 
Adam's penalty of decay and death. His ecclesiastics, espe- 
cially, keep the reader in continual astonishment how wisdom 
and virtue of such ethereal quality could be so long retained 



ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 363 

from evaporating to the sky. To this earth they were hardly 
indebted, even to the amount of finding it a place to improve 
themselves in — except in knowledge ; for their moral endow- 
ments were complete from the first. Every thing that opposed 
them in any point was error and malice ; and the author won- 
ders how even error and malice themselves could have had 
such effrontery. And when these superhuman characters car- 
ried themselves with meekness and moderation, which indeed 
they did always, in the contests which arose from a criminal 
doubt of their infallibility, their doing so is celebrated as if 
they had possessed a power and a right to avenge themselves 
by bringing down fire from heaven. All institutions to which 
they adhered were necessarily of divine appointment, and au- 
thorized to impose themselves on all judgments and con- 
sciences, and to award punishments to recusants, for which it 
was no small perversity in them not to be thankful. Mr. 
Wordsworth cannot mean to have himself considered as say- 
ing all that is said by such a biographer. Still less as adopt- 
ing all the dictates of ignorant bigotry in Sir George Panic's 
Life of Archbishop Whitgift, which intolerant prelate is there 
described as every thing reasonable, moderate, forbearing, 
forgiving, and "tender-hearted," and all whose opponents and 
victims deserved to fall into incomparably worse hands. 

With respect to this one article, indeed, Ave may perhaps 
be allowed to question whether it was perfectly consistent 
with liberality of spirit, even in the unresponsible office of 
republisher, or the very slightly responsible office of compiler, 
to admit such a thing into the series, and so make it an insep- 
arable part of the purchase. It has no such excellence of 
workmanship as to render it, in spite of its moral qualities, 
worth possessing as a literary rarity ; and as to those moral 
qualities, the editor knows that if all biography were wiitten 
in the same manner, the best use of all biography would be 
to light fires. Every impartial examiner of the history of 
those times knows, that nothing less than either the most stu- 
pid bigotry, or flagrant dishonesty, could uniformly, through- 
out a long memoir, represent the proceedings on which Whit- 
gift's fame is founded, as directed solely against faction, tur- 
bulence, and irreligion. Every one who has but glanced at 
that history knows, that he was the staunch and most willing 
minister and prompter of the bigotry of the half-popish Eliza- 
beth ; that his proceedings were such, as to draw from the 



364 ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 

lord treasurer, Burleigh, (who is, notwithstanding, in this me- 
moir, impudently affirmed to have been " always his firm and 
constant friend,") an indignant remonstrance, pronouncing 
one of his most celebrated measures more iniquitous than 
those of the Spanish inquisition ; that he and his coadjutor, 
the bishop of London, received, and received without adopt- 
ing any change of conduct in consequence, a letter from the 
lords of the council,* in which it was represented to these 
prelates, that the council had "of late heard of great numbers 
of zealous and learned preachers suspended from their cures 
in the county of Essex, and that there is no preaching, pray- 
ers, or sacraments, in most of the vacant places ; that in some 
few of them persons neither of learning nor good name are 
appointed ; and that in other places of the country, great num- 
bers of the persons that occupy cures, are notoriously unfit ; 
most for the lack of learning ; some chargeable with great 
and enormous faults, as drunkenness, filthiness of life, gam- 
ing at cards, haunting of ale-houses, &c., against whom they 
heard of no proceedings, but that they were quietly suffered." 
The letter was accompanied with a catalogue of names, one 
column of learned ministers deprived, a second of unlearned 
and vicious ones continued, and a third of pluralists and non- 
residents ; on which the council observed, " against these lat- 
ter we have heard of no inquisition ; but of great diligence 
and extreme usage against those that were known to be dili- 
gent preachers ; we therefore pray your lordships to have 
some charitable consideration of their causes, that people may 
not be deprived of their diligent, learned, and zealous pastors, 
forafew points ceremonial which entangled their consciences." 
It was owing to the relentless intolerance of the queen, who 
supported the prelates in all such proceedings, that such min- 
isters as Burleigh and AValsingham were reduced to remon- 
strate in vain. Now if a bigoted retainer of the name of Sir 
George Paule, chose to write a life of such a prelate, celebrat- 
ing his transcendent piety, equity, clemency, usefulness, and 
so forth, and applying all the terms of odium and contempt to 
whatever was opposed to him, we cannot comprehend what 
necessity on earth there could be for Mr. Wordsworth to give 
new currency to this piece of arrogance and misrepresenta- 

* Burkijrh, Warwick, Slircwsbury, Leicester, Lord Charles Howard, 
Sir James Crofts, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Sir Francis Walsingham. 



ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGKAPHY. 365 

tion. We -will not entertain the suggestion, that such a ne- 
cessity could arise from his official situation ; such a surmise 
is too humiliating to be admitted for a moment. Whatever 
could have been the reason that determined its insertion, we 
should have thought, that, as Mr. Wordsworth has undertaken 
to correct, confirm, or illustrate all his authors by means of 
notes, the determination to introduce this article would have 
been accompanied by the strongest conviction of the duty of 
protesting against the violent bigotry of the writer, and cau- 
tioning the readers against forming, on so bad an authority, 
their estimate of the archbishop, and of the class of persons 
that he persecuted. We observe nothing of this kind, how- 
ever, in the notes. The editor seems willing the piece should 
produce all the eticct it can on the minds of his clerical breth- 
ren, for whose use his work is especially intended. And we 
are ashamed to see him willing that other pieces of misre- 
presentation, also, should produce their etiect ; for in one of 
the notes on this article, he recommends the lately reprinted 
account of the famous Hampton-Court conference drawn up 
by Dr. Barlow, which he says " is important, as exhibiting a 
view of the state of the controversy between the orthodox 
clergy and the puritans, and the perusal of m hich, in this 
place, is therefore recommended to the reader." " It has ap- 
peared again, recently, in a valuable and seasonable Collec- 
tion of Tracts, called the Churchman's Remembrancer." 
Now Mr. Wordsworth knows that the puritan divines who at- 
tended that conference, and had quite as much right to be 
believed as Dr. Barlow, declared that account to be an utterly 
unfair report ; and that their historians relate many instances 
of the insolence and violence of the prelates and the monarch, 
in that "meeting for the hearing and determining things pre- 
tended to be amiss in the church." (See Neal's Hist., vol. 
I., p. 410.) It is therefore not obvious, in what sense the re- 
appearance of such a partial, and consequently, in effect, fal- 
lacious tract, can be called " seasonable." The only mode in 
which the republication of such things as that tract, and this 
Life of Whitgift, could be rendered seasonable in the sense 
of being useful, would be, to accompany them with a severe 
comment to mark the various ways in which prejudice and 
bigotry can misrepresent without committing themselves in 
palpable and bulky falsehoods, and to illustrate some of the 
pernicious effects which have been the result of such partial 
alienation of understanding, or total contempt of principle, in 



366 ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 

the statements of party historians, on whatever side. Such 
a comment on the Life of Whitgift might very properly be ex- 
tended from the spirit and trustworthiness of the biographer, 
to the merits of the subject ; and it would never be otherwise 
than " seasonable" for a clergyman to evince the present 
liberality of his order, by disclaiming, in its name and his 
own, all principles allied to those by which the prelate in ques- 
tion was actuated. For, without going further than the facts 
alleged by Burleigh, Walsingham, and the rest of that memo- 
rable council, it may fairly be asserted, that Whitgift acted on 
the principle, that religion and morality, the appointments of 
the Almighty, are things exceedingly subordinate to the eccle- 
siastical establishment, a local appointment of man. It ap- 
pears from this testimony, which no man will have the folly to 
call in question, that the archbishop could easily tolerate his 
clergy in being ignorant, careless, and profligate, provided 
they punctiliously observed all the prescribed ceremonies ; 
while he could applaud himself for directing the vengeance of 
the Star Chamber against the most learned, pious, and zeal- 
ous preachers, that conscientiously declined some part of the 
ceremonial conformity. He chose rather that the people 
should not be instructed in religion at all, than be taught it by 
even the most excellent ministers, who could not acknowledge 
a particular gesture, or robe, or form of words, as an essen- 
tial part of it. The censure of such a character, and the ex- 
ecration of such principles, are no matter of party ; for it is 
not permitted to any party, pretending at all to religion, to 
approve them. But the condemnation comes with a peculiarly 
good grace from the clergy ; and it might be expected they 
would lose no fair opportunity to exiiress it. It is difficult to 
comprehend why a liberal clergyman*''S^wi.ild have introduced 
into his compilation such an article as this life, but for the 
sake of giving himself such an opportunity, unless he acted 
under some superior authority, which prescribed to him the 
exact length and breadth of his task. In order, therefore, to 
preserve civility to the present editor, we must suppose him 
to be subjected to some much more illiberal supervision, than 
we believe it is usual for the trade to appoint over authors and 
editors. And as to the compilation itself, we consider it as 
much disgraced by the admission of this article. — As a slight 
sample of Sir George Paule and his most reverend patron, we 
may cite an illustration of their apostolic notions of the best 
means of giving dignity and effect to the Christian religion. 



ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 367 

*' Every third year he went into Kent, (unless great occasions hindered 
him,) where he was so honourably attended upon by his own train (consist- 
ing of two hundred persons) and with the gentlemen of the country, that 
he did sometimes ride into the city of Canterbury, and into other towns, 
with eight hundred or a thousand horse. And surely the entertainment 
which he gave them, and they him, was so great, that, as I am verily per- 
suaded, no shire in England did, or could, give greater, or with more 
cheerful minds, unto each other. The fatherly care which he had of his 
clergy, (whom he never charged with visitation, but once in twenty years,) 
his affability amongst the gentlemen, and courteous usage of his tenants, 
gained him so great a love, that he might very far prevail with them ; yea, 
they never denied him any request that he made unto them. 

" At his first journey into Kent, he rode into Dover, being attended 
with a hundred of his own servants, at least, in livery, whereof there were 
forty gentlemen in chains of gold. The train of clergy and gentlemen in 
the country and their followers, was about five hundred horse. At his en- 
trance into the town, there happily landed an intelligencer from Rome, of 
good parts, and account, who wondered to see an arehbishop or clergyman, 
in England, so reverenced and attended. But seeing him next upon the 
sabbath-day in the cathedral church of Canterbury, attended upon by his 
gentlemen and servants (as is aforesaid), also by the dean, prebendaries, 
and preachers, in their surplices, and scarlet hoods, and heard the solemn 
music, with the voices, and organs, and cornets, and sackbuts, he was 
overtaken with admiration, and told an English gentleman of Ycry good 
quality (who then accompanied him) ' that they were led in great blind- 
ness at Rome by our own nation, who made the people there believe that 
there was not in England either archbishop, or bishop, or cathedral, or 
any church, or ecclesiastical government ; but that all was pulled down to 
the ground, and that the people heard their ministers in the woods and 
fields, among trees, and brute beasts ; but, for his own part, he protested, 
that, (unless it were in the pope's chapel,) he never saw a more solemn 
Bight, or heard a more heavenly sound.' ' Well,' said the English gentle- 
man, ' I am glad of this your so lucky and first sight ; ere long you will be 
of another mind, and, I hope, work miracles and return to Rome, in mak- 
ing those that are led in blindness, to see and understand the truth.'" — 
Vol. IV. p. 387. 

Now, considering in what manner the prelate vakied him- 
self and the institution of which he held the first dignity, on 
all this personal and ecclesiastical pomp, we would hope, for 
the sake of his complacency, that he might not have happen- 
ed to have read Cavendish's most entertaining Life of Wol- 
sey, then existing in manuscript at Lambeth, and now for the 
first time correctly printed in this work ; for, in reading that 
record, he would have been almost strangled with envy at the 
description of a far superior magnificence displayed, a little 
more than half a century before him, by a dignitary of the 
church of Rome. 

Having discharged the indispensable duty, in place of the 



368 ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRArHY. 

editor, (who has not felt the jurisdiction of his office extend- 
ing so far,) of reprobating the part of the compilation which 
is so flagrant with the brimstone of intolerance and perse- 
cution, it is with great pleasure we lind ourselves at liberty 
to say, that on the whole the work is a very valuable ser- 
vice rendered both to the religious and the literary public. 
The parts compiled from Fox are judiciously extracted and 
disposed ; and as that huge work is for the most part repos- 
ing in undisturbed dust, and will never be consulted by so 
much as one in a thousand of our reading countrymen, we 
are glad that a considerable number of them will now be en- 
abled to peruse, in Fox's own language, some of the most 
striking pieces of history contained within the whole re- 
cords of the world. They may contemplate, in a narrative 
full of antique simplicity and animation, the actions and 
speeches of such men as Wickliffe, Latimer, Ridley, and a 
number more of the same order ; characters of a strange 
and gigantic race that seems now extinct, and w^hich holds, 
in the history of religion, a rank exactly parallel to that held 
by Plutarch's heroes in the history of war. Cavendish's very 
curious memoir, in its true original form, will be highly accept- 
able to the public. We are not less pleased with the origin- 
al life of Sir Thomas More, and are sincerely grateful to Mr. 
W. for his laborious care to give it in a correct and complete 
state. It is now more ample and more animated, than any of 
the memoirs of him with which the public are familiar. The 
lives here given of Jewel, Gilpin, Hammond, Sir Matthew 
Hale, &c., are some of them but very little, and some of them 
not at all, within the acquaintance of the generality of readers; 
and we have many times observed with wonder, how few per- 
sons comparatively know any thing of the memorable charac- 
ter and history of Nicholas Ferrar, notwithstanding the me- 
moirs, which are here in substance reprinted, were published 
so lately as the year 1790. — It cannot be read without a very 
unusual mixture of admiring and indignant feeling : we can 
remember no other instance of being so much provoked with 
so pre-eminently excellent a man. He was in the fullest sense 
of the word a prodigy of early talents, acquirements, and piety ; 
travelled almost before he had attained the age of manhood, 
over the greater part of Europe, commanding involuntarily the 
admiration and affection of the most learned men in the most 
learned universities and academies, passing through many ad- 



ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 369 

ventures and perils with a heroism of too elevated a kind to be 
called romantic, the heroism of piety, and maintaining every 
where an immaculate character ; on returning home, (in the 
earlier part of the seventeenth century,) he was almost com- 
pelled into important public employments, made a brilliant en- 
trance in the House of Commons, waging ardent and success- 
ful war on the public delinquents that in those times, so un- 
like the present, infested that house ; and after he had done 
this, and when there was plenty more such work for him to 
do, he quitted public life, at little more than the age of thirty, 
in obedience to a religious fancy he had long entertained, and 
formed of his family and relations a sort of little half^popish 
convent, in which he passed the remainder of his life. 



870 



XIX. 



SPAIN 



Chronicle of the Cid, From the Spanish. By Robert 

SOUTHEY. 

During the seven centuries that have elapsed since the death 
of the Cid, there has probably never been a time, till within 
the last seven months, when a large volume of half legendary 
history of his adventures would have had any great chance of 
obtaining much attention in England. Just now is the time, 
or rather four or live months since was th'fe time, for calling 
some of the chiefs of the ancient Spanish chivalry from their 
long slumber, in order to assist us to extend backward into for- 
mer ages our interest in the heroic character of that nation ; a 
nation in which we had begun to hope that almost every noble- 
man and every peasant was going to perform such exploits as 
those of the Cid, in a more righteous cause than almost any in 
which that hero had the fortune to display his valour. We are 
never content to confine our admiration to the present spirit 
and actions of an individual, or of a people, that has become a 
favourite with us, if we can find or fancy any thing deserving 
to be admired, in the retrospect of its earlier times. Besides, 
when a people is entering on a grand and most perilous enter- 
prise, in which it is evident that any thing less than the most 
heroic spirit must fail, the martial names and achievements of 
its ancestors have a certain influence, a greater, indeed, than 
is warranted by the history of national character, on our hopes 
of its success. When summoned to vindicate the national 
cause, the men surely will not hide themselves from danger 
among the very monuments of their heroic progenitors ; they 
cannot be content to read and recite the stories of invincible 
champions, of their own names, and, by their nativity, reflect- 
ing lustre on their own villages and towns, and yet see these 
towns and villages commanded and plundered by bands of for- 



SOUTHEY S CHRONICLE OP THE CID. 371 

eign invaders ; they cannot endure to see their country and 
themselves in a state to make them abhor the recollection that 
such renowned heroes were their forefathers ; — is it possible 
that the Spaniards of the present day, recalling to mind the 
gallant hostility which once expelled the Moors, can quietly sink 
down under the domination of the modern Saracens ? It has 
occurred to our thoughts numberless times, while going through 
this volume, what an intolerable place their country would 
soon become, to the usurping enemy, if the martial spirit 
which blazed all over it in the eleventh century could be now 
re-kindled ; and what a dreadful impression would be made on 
the Gallic squadrons by even a very small army of such men 
as this Rodrigo Diaz, and those that fought by his side. The 
very same reflections have occurred, no doubt, to multitudes of 
the Spanish nation, within the last few months : but, notwith- 
standing all such reflections, and the momentary ardour they 
may in some instances possibly have excited, it would appear 
that one more proof remained to be given, that, in these times, 
the tombs, the histories, and the splendid fables of valiant an- 
cestors have lost all their power against a daring invader. 

As all our readers, as w^ell as ourselves, talk less or more 
every day of the events in Spain, which have lately awakened 
the strongest interest throughout the whole civilized world, it 
will, perhaps, be permitted us to take this occasion of suggesting 
a few considerations relative to those events, and to the manner 
in which they have been viewed and celebrated in this coun- 
try. 

With regard to the manner in which those events have been 
beheld and discussed, it is painful to us, as believers in Chris- 
tianity, to have to observe, that it may be doubted whether 
there has ever been a grand affair, involving a most moment- 
ous crisis, and creating a profound and universal solicitude, 
which was contemplated in this country with any thing so 
much like a general consent to forget all religious considera- 
tions. The anxiety which we have fully shared with all around 
us, for the success of the Spanish people, could not prevent us 
from sometimes thoughtfully observing in what terms anxiety, 
speculation, or triumph, were expressed by veteran statesmen, 
young political philosophers, many divines, the whole tribe al- 
most of journalists, and a very large proportion of the mass of 
the people ; and it has been exceedingly striking to perceive 
the general willingness to exempt the Governor of the world 



372 southey's chronicle of the cid. 

from all exercise of care or interference. We really believe 
we have hardly met with one political or military calculation 
on the powers and probabilities in this great commotion, in 
which the fact of an Almighty Providence, if any accident 
could have suggested it to the calculator's thoughts, would 
have been of half as much importance in his account, as one 
regiment of soldiers more or less, or one cargo of ammunition. 
But in general, the thought seems not to have occurred at all ; 
the plans, the reasonings, the auguries, the exultation, and the 
fears, have all been entertained and revolved, under an entire 
failure to recollect that an invisible Being has ever decided 
the course and events of human affairs. And the benefit of 
this exclusion of every thought relating to that Being has been 
very great, to the confident class of speculators, as it has sim- 
plified their calculations ; the interference of an invisible Pow- 
er, is a thing so independent and mysterious, that it is very 
difficult to adjust its place and value among the elements of 
the calculation ; but let the whole matter be reduced to a plain 
account of so many men in arms against so many, and we go 
directly to the consequence without hesitation. 

We could not deem it a favourable omen, when we ob- 
served the general, and we think unequalled, prevalence, in 
this Christian country, of so light an estimate of the depen- 
dence of human affairs on the Supreme Governor. Another 
very prominent circumstance, has been the apparent renun- 
ciation of all concern about the stability or subversion of the 
power of the Romish church. In times that are past, yet not 
so long past but we ourselves can remember them, this most 
impious, tyrannic, and cruel power was regarded as one of 
the most pernicious and hateful things on the face of the whole 
earth; and its grand instrument, the inquisition, was con- 
sidered as precisely the utmost reach of diabolical contrivance 
and malignit}^ English protestants codd not hear the words 
popery and inquisition, without instantly thinking of crowds of 
racked, or burning, or bleeding martyrs ; of numerous other 
pious and holy men perishing in dungeons and deserts ; of 
soldiers, stimulated by priests to merit heaven by absolutely 
wantoning in the torments and death of women and children ; 
of midnight spies, of domestics exhorted and threatened into 
informers, of the general interdiction of divine knowledge by 
severe punishments for reading the bible, of an infinite swarm 
of lazy, bigoted, and vicious ecclesiastics, of the worship of 



SOTJTHEY S CHRONICLE OF THE CID. 373 

saints and of images, and of a train of follies and impieties, in 
doctrine and ceremony, far too numerous to be named. No- 
thing inspired greater delight than any symptoms of the ap- 
proaching fall of this most execrable power ; our anticipations 
of the prosperity or decline of any of the political states of 
Europe depended very much, perhaps more than on any other 
thing whatever, on the degree in which they respectively as- 
sisted or opposed that impious and cruel hierarchy: while 
many devout and learned writers, and a multitude of their 
readers, rejoiced to discern any coincidence between passing 
events and the prophecies of the fall of antichrist. In looking 
round on the states that support this enormous usurpation on 
the liberty, the reason, and the conscience of mankind, it was 
notorious that Spain and Portugal were the most faithful sub- 
jects of the slavery and abettors of the tyranny. When the 
recent movement in Spain became so extensive as apparently 
to promise to raise the whole effective population in arms, we 
began to entertain a most earnest sentiment, something be- 
tween the desponding desire and the hope, that now, at last, 
not only a repelling boundary, much more lofty and impervious 
than the Pyrenees, would be raised against the irruptions, on 
one side, at least, of the grand tyrant of Europe, but also that, 
in some way or other, the strongest hold of popery would be 
eventually shaken into ruins. It was not to be expected that 
any direct measures, for reducing the inveterate ascendency of 
the popish establishment, would form a part of the first revo- 
lutionary proceedings. But, as we trusted that all the genius 
and knowledge in the country would be called forth by the 
great occasion, and that the most able, enlightened, and liberal 
men would soon come to occupy the vacated powers of govern- 
ment, we flattered ourselves they would be too wise, as states- 
men, to be bigoted as catholics. We presumed they could not 
but feel that the freedom which deserved to be sought at the 
expense of a prolonged and direful conflict with the greatest 
military power the world ever saw, would remain imperfect, 
dishonoured, and in a great measure useless, unless something 
were at least gradually effected, for reducing that despotism of 
superstition, which would else be a fatal obstacle to all grand 
schemes of national improvement. We thought that the great 
commotion, which would excite throughout the whole nation 
twenty times more bold thought and strong passion, than had 
prevailed in it at any one period for centuries past, would give 
17 



374 soutiiey's cheonicxe oy the cid. 

such a shock to the dominion of superstition, as to loosen and 
crack all its impositions and institutions. And why should we 
forbear to add, that we had a new ground of hope, when this 
liberal and protestant nation determined to put forth all its im- 
mense strength in aid of the Spanish cause, and when it was 
avowed in both countries that without this aid that cause could 
not triumph ? It was quite natural to conclude, that this pro- 
testant nation, which had but very recently testified its anti- 
pathy to popery with an ardour of zeal almost flaming into 
fanaticism, would accompany this assistance, if not with the 
stipulated condition, at least with the most powerful recom- 
mendation, of some remission of the rigours of spiritual slavery; 
a recommendation which, under such circumstances, could 
not have failed to be effectual. 

Thus, we had begun to indulge anticipations of momentous 
changes in favour of intellect, conscience, and religion, to arise 
from the great movement in assertion of national liberty. 
"When, however, in the simplicity of our hearts, we began to 
give vent to some of these imaginations, in such little humble 
circles of politicians as we can be supposed to be admitted 
in, we found our noiions received with a smile of contempt. 
We were told, that these are not times for recalling the anti- 
quated trifling controversies of divines about popery and pro- 
testantism ; that enlightened politicians are now of opinion, 
that the iniquitous institutions of the superstition of any country 
ought to be held sacred and inviolate in that country ; that if a 
few protestants have sometimes got themselves into the dun- 
geons of the inquisition, it was their own fault, as they might 
have gone quietly to mass like their neighbours ; that, in 
short, any such concerns as that of securing such things as 
liberty of religious profession andAvorship, are altogether be- 
neath the notice of states, and those who preside over them, 
' in great conjunctures of their aflfairs. We were rather plainly 
told, that such grand events as those of the present time are 
not for the understandings of persons who can never advert to 
any great subject without making it little by some conceit 
about Providence, and whose first grovelling anxiety and last, 
in political commotions and revolutions, fixes itself on no 
greater an object than what it calls the advancement of pure 
religion, — meaning perhaps, in truth, nothing better than the 
progress of methodism. 

On this we betook cmselves, for a while, to the silent ob- 



SOUTHEY S CHRONICLE OF THE CID. 375 

servations of events and opinions, and soon perceived that we 
had indeed entertained a very fantastic kind of sentiments. 
Except a number of religionists of the most antiquated stamp, 
nobody seemed to recollect any harm that popish intolerance 
had ever done ; the inquisition was almost become venerable, 
as a fortress of the faith against modern intidelity ; at any rate, 
it was a powerful support of the ancient established order of 
things ; a most bigoted tribe of priests had our cordial license 
to hunt heretics, and keep the people in the most wretched and 
debasing ignorance, if they would only make sanguinary ad- 
dresses (many of them were in the most savage style) to rouse 
the population to war. Let but the enemy be destroyed, and the 
conquerors might celebrate their victory, for any thing our na- 
tion seemed to care, with an auto dafe. The xerj fortresses, 
that Englishmen might shed their blood in recovering from the 
enemy, might be allowed to become, the following year or 
month, the prisons of those who wished for liberty to profess 
the faith of their generous deliverers. All were enthusiastic, 
and very justly so, for the rescue of Spain and Portugal ; go- 
vernors and people, debaters, newswriters, reviewers, all 
breathed fire against Attilla and his barbarians ; and when 
these invaders were exterminated, the glorious result Mas to 
be — what was it to be ? what in all reason ought it to be ? 
As far as w^e could understand, it was to be a full restoration 
of that order of things, under which those countries had, for 
ages, invariably presented the most melancholy spectacle of 
imprisoned mind, of tyrannic superstition, and of national pros- 
tration, in all Europe. We say, a full restoration ; for there 
was not, that we remember, a single particular of the whole 
wretched economy specified for reformation, in the event of 
success, or as a condition of our powerful and expensive co- 
operation to secure it. 

That great improvement of modern times, the division of 
labour, may have extended much further than we were aware. 
In some past periods there have been in England politicians 
and statesmen of very great note in their day, who assumed it 
as a part of their vocation, to promote, to the utmost of their 
power, in their transactions with allies, the security of con- 
scientious men and reforming reasoners, against the per- 
secuting malice of a spiritual tyranny. It may be, that now 
the narrowed province of this class of men no longer includes 
this concern. This may be ; — but then another thing also 



376 southey's chronicle or the cid. 

may be ; if they have exckided from their department a con- 
cern which the Divine Governor has included within their 
duty, it may be that schemes and enterprises, in professed vin- 
dication of liberty, are, on account of this indifference or con- 
tempt, shown to the most sacred branch of liberty, destined to 
fail. The division of labour might be carried so far as to be 
fatal ; if the officers and crew of a damaged ship at sea, should 
choose to say, that their business is to navigate the vessel 
and defend it against the enemy, and that as to the leak, which 
is fast filling the hold, that belongs to the shipwright's busi- 
ness in the port, the consequence would not be very doubtful. 
We began to fear, a good many months since, that such a fate 
awaited our grand undertaking in favour of Spain. For the 
last twenty years, it had appeared most evident, that Provi- 
dence was hastening the fall of incomparably the most dread- 
ful tyrant that ever arrogated the dominion of Europe, — the 
popish superstition ; it had become the general persuasion of 
wise and good men, both from examining the Scriptures, and 
observing the course of events, that this divine process of 
emancipation, which had been so ardently longed and prayed 
for by millions of the devoutest and holiest men that ever in- 
habited the earth, would proceed rapidly to its completion ; 
and therefore it was impossible to repel the conviction, in- 
dependently of all calculations of comparative military forces, 
that the mightiest effort in the power of any nation to make, 
if a chief object of that effort was absolutely to maintain the 
popish system in all its ancient rigour, must fail ; and that any 
other nation, especially if a protestant nation, lending its as- 
sistance on such terms as to adopt and promote this object, must 
eventually retire with disaster and humiliation. This object, 
in its most decided form, was invariably avowed in Spain ; and 
as far as the public are yet informed, the whole resources of 
this country were pledged, without a stipulation or a remon- 
strance against a system which would doom any advocate of 
pure religion to imprisonment, or tortures, or death. Our poli- 
ticians may say it was not within their province, " not in their 
competence," to take account of any such matters ; but nei- 
ther, therefore, was it permitted to be in their competence, 
with the whole vast means of this country at their disposal, 
to accomplish any part of the great political project. A most 
signal fatality has appeared to accompany every measure and 
movement ; the results are before us ; Spain is overwhelmed, 



southey's chronicle of the cid. 877 

and our armies, after months and months of inefficiency and 
ostentation, are driven out under circumstances of the utmost 
affliction and mortification, and followed by the most bitter 
taunt that ever stung this nation, that " in spite of the English, 
the inquisition, the overgrown monkish establishments, and 
the oppressive privileges of the nobles, have ceased to exist in 
Spain." What a memorable fact it will be in the history of 
these times, that the enlightened nation, which had so long 
been the grand champion of protestantism, should have justly 
incurred this poignant and triumphant reproach from a con- 
queror, who is himself a pretended papist! The wonder, how- 
ever, will relate solely to the principles on which the enter- 
prise was undertaken ; there will be no wonder at the con- 
sequence : if one of the most emphatic petitions which good 
men could have concurred to address to Heaven, for the 
Spanish people, would have been, that such institutions might 
fall, — and if the intimations of revelation combined with the 
recent and contemporary train of events, to give solemn 
signs that the papal institutions were in fact just ready to fall, 
— what was the result to be reasonably apprehended, when a 
protestant nation should undertake to exert its utmost force 
that, as connected with the other establishments of the un- 
happy people, these institutions might stand ? Was it to be 
expected that out of pure favour to the English, as protestants, 
the Supreme Disposer would suspend his operations for de- 
stroying the popish domination ? 

We gladly believe there are times yet to come, when poli- 
ticians will be aware that the question, what monarch or what 
dynasty is to rule any particular portion of the earth, is an 
exceedingly trifling matter in the view of Him that governs it 
all, compared with the promotion or the repression of the 
cause of pure Christianity. How many more disastrous cal- 
culations and events are to enrich our history with melan- 
choly instruction for their benefit, remains to be seen ; and it 
is not difficult to imagine new occasions for practically try- 
ing, whether it is really a judicious principle in politics, for a 
Christian and protestant nation to lend its force and sanction 
formally to maintain and consolidate the most pernicious and 
cruel superstitions of every country, where it has an absolute 
or an influential power. This point should be decided ; and 
if all the experiments are to be made, on an assumption of 
the affirmative, it is not too much to anticipate that the series 



878 

may be very short, and that the result may be recorded on 
the monumental ruins of a great empire. 

Some readers may perhaps here allege, that the martial 
despot that has been successful, is also a supporter of super- 
stition ; that he inserted in the new constitution for Spain, 
framed at Bayonne, an article expressing that no religion but 
popery should be legally tolerated, and that he carried this 
into effect in agreeing to the first article of capitulation, pro- 
posed by the inhabitants of Madrid. We may answer, first, 
it cannot reasonably surprise us, if the Divine Being should 
manifest a much severer indignation against the formal sup- 
port of popish superstition, by a nation long eminent for zeal- 
ous protestantism, than against even the same support by a 
nation long equally eminent for its zealous popery. Secondly, 
though Napoleon does pretend, and in some degree practise, 
an adherence to the Romish church, yet all Europe sees that 
he is, in effect, its enemy and destroyer ; he treats some of 
its most sacred institutions with contempt, and for his own 
purposes is gradually abolishing the various organs of power 
that made it so formidable. As far, therefore, as an able, 
powerful, bad man, who does every thing from motives of 
selfish policy and ambition, may be a fit agent, under the 
divine government, for breaking up by degrees the dominion 
mider which reason and conscience have so long been re- 
duced to suffer, the present agitator of nations seems the right 
operator. 

We have thus endeavoured to explain how we soon began 
to despair, on a religious ground, of a cause, for the success 
of which our anxiety, in a political reference, most warmly 
sympathized with that of our countrymen in general. We 
will now venture one or two brief observations on the politi- 
cal grounds of hope, afforded by the first stages of the grand 
movement. 

That a nation in arms cannot be conquered, is perhaps a 
proposition, like many others that sound very well, of but 
little meaning. The thing cannot be realized ; there never 
can be a nation in arms. Say that the men capable of bear- 
ing arms, that is, not too young, nor too old, nor too un- 
healthy, are as much as a sixth part of the whole population ; 
this will indeed give a most formidable list in such a country 
as Spain. But then how evident it is, that only a slender 
minority of this enrolment will ever come into action. A 



southey's chronicle of the cid. 379 

very large proportion of these competBnt men must be em- 
ploj^ed in preparing the furniture of war for those who ac- 
tually take the field ; a large proportion of them must attend 
to the indispensable concerns of agilculture ; millers, and 
numerous manufacturers and shopkeepers, must keep to their 
business,- if the population is to be regularly supplied with 
the most direct necessaries ; many of the enumerated men 
must stay to take care of their sick, their aged, or their infant 
relatives : in a catholic country a number are under eccle- 
siastical restriction ; a considerable number of men to write 
and print, are as necessary, in such a juncture, as men to 
fight ; many must be employed in every district, in concerns of 
council and police ; a number, in almost any imaginable war, 
will join the enemy, at any point where he has been signally 
successful. We will add only one other class, that is, cowards, 
who positively will not fight at all, and whom it would require 
more than half of those that will fight, to attempt to hunt and 
capture and coerce into battle ; of thesa there naturally must 
be a very large number in every nation of Europe ; and these, 
in addition to their timidity, will generally be sceptical enough 
as to the necessity of the war itself; such concessions as they 
would have made, and as they think ought to have been 
made, rather than provoke so dreadful an extremity, would 
have averted it. 

We have heard commonly enough, of late, of five or six 
hundred thousand warriors being ready to march, or even of 
a " million of heroes panting to rush on the enemy, and re- 
solved to conquer or perish ;" the absurdity of such flourishes 
might be apparent, on a moment's reflection, which is enough 
to convince us that though we may talk of " rising in a mass," 
and of a " nation in arms," it is in fact but a comparatively 
small proportion of the inhabitants physically capable of act- 
ing in arms, that can at any time, in any civilized country, be 
brought into military operation. Instead of the innumerable 
myriads which many of us seemed to imagine would drive on 
like the moving sand of the Arabian desert, and absolutely 
overwhelm the first large French army that should venture to 
present its front in Spain ; it was very doubtful whether the 
Spanish nation, even if as generally inspired with patriotic 
ardour as it is possible for any nation to be, and carrying to 
its utmost practicable extent the principle of rising in a mass, 
could have met the invader with a force numerically equal to 



S80 southey's chronicle of the cid. 

what he could without much difficulty bring, considering the 
immense number of his veterans at every moment in the pos- 
ture of war, the authority and promptitude of his decrees of 
conscription, and the vast extent of populous territory ovey 
which those conscriptions operate. And as to the nature of 
this popular levy, it was to be considered what an uncouth 
element of armies it would continue to be for months, what a 
want there was of men of commanding military talents, to 
throw the rude though brave masses into system, and at the 
same time how soon their quality, and the capacity of their 
leaders, were likely to be brought to the test by the unremit- 
ting assault of their rapid and pertinacious enemy. It was 
also to be inquired, where were arsenals and magazines 1 
whence were half the requisite number of fire-arms to be 
obtained ? for as to other arms, there can be no greater folly 
than to talk of them. Possibly there are, in every country, 
a very small number of men so firm and so fierce that, with- 
out any other weapons than pikes, they would resolutely ad- 
vance to the encounter with musketry and artillery ; but as to 
the generality of the men that armies must be composed o^ 
we think their defeat is infallible, whatever their numbers 
may be, if under no other protection than their pikes they 
are confronted with lines of fire-arms. For, setting aside 
the real difierence of power between the two kinds of wea- 
pons, setting aside too the effect of manoeuvres, the influence 
of imagination will be great and fatal. To unpractised troops, 
at least, guns seem something more than mere M^eapons ; 
both by those that hold them, and those that meet them, it is 
almost felt as if they had a kind of formidable efficacy in 
themselves, their operation is so totally different from any 
other instrument that can be wielded by hmuan hands. The 
explosion, the flash, and the infliction of death, at a great 
distance, by a missile that cannot be seen or avoided, inspire 
in the possessor of the weapon a certain consciousness of 
being a much more powerful agent, than he could have been 
by an implement, which had no other force than just that 
which he could give it by the grasp and movement of his 
hand, and no effect at a distance. And this influence of 
imagination operates with double force on the man who is 
advancing against these fire-arms, while himself has only an 
inert piece of wood or iron ; he will look with despondency 
and contempt on his pointed stick, while the lines in his front 



southey's chronicle of the cid. 381 

seem to be arrayed in thunder and lighting, while he is start- 
ling at the frequent hiss of bullets, and seeing his companions 
begin to fall. 

But there \vould be no end of enumerating the disadvan- 
tages, under which the Spanish insurrection was to encounter 
such a tremendous invasion ; and, even admitting that insur- 
rection to be as general and as enthusiastic as it was repre- 
sented, a sanguine expectation of its success was probably 
entertained by very few of our countrymen, after it was as- 
certained to the conviction of all that Bonaparte had nothing 
to fear on the side of Germany, though the earnest desire did 
sometimes assume the language of confident hope. Still, 
however, it was not the less certain, that a great and resolute 
nation might accomplish wonders, against the largest regular 
armies, and the most experienced commanders ; as history 
was at hand to show, by various examples, and eminently 
al)ove all others, that of the war of the French revolution. 
Certainly indeed, there was an ominous difference, in point 
of genius and system, between the leaders of the war against 
Spain and the commanders who had invaded France ; the 
highest genius, however, cannot work literally by magic ; and 
if the French legions could have been commanded by even 
still greater talents than those actually at their head, it was 
evident they must receive a dreadful shock if they M^ere to be 
fallen upon by several hundred thousand men, impelled by the 
same enthusiasm of valour and obstinacy of perseverance 
which first confounded and finally routed the grand armies of 
Brunswick, Clairfait, and Saxe Coburg ; in the varieties of 
the conflict, besides, all the latent genius in the patriotic army 
would flame out, and declare whom nature had appointed, in 
contempt of all laws of rank, to the command. But then, 
there must be an adequate cause to inspire the popular levies 
with this heroic fury, which should persist to burn and to 
fight, in spite of all checks, and disasters, in fortress and in 
field, whether the battalions were in order or confusion, whe- 
ther they found themselves separated into small bodies, or 
thrown together in a ponderous mass. And it might fairly be 
assumed, at the commencement of the Spanish revolution, 
that no less cause, no other cause, than that which had pro- 
duced this grand effect in the French levy en masse, would 
now produce it in that of Spain. All know that the cause 
which operated thus on the revolutionary armies of France, 
17* 



382 

was the passion for liberty, continually inflamed to a state of 
enthusiasm, by having the object most simply and conspicu- 
ously placed in view. The object was placed before them, 
if we may so express it, " full orbed ;" it was liberty, not in 
the partial sense merely of being freed from the power and 
interference of the foreign monarchs who had sent the armies 
they were combating, and whose design, they had little doubt, 
it was to divide France among them as a conquest, and its 
people as slaves ; but in the animating sense, also, of being 
no longer the subjects of a despot at home. A general could 
circulate through his camp an address like the following : — 
" Brave citizens, soldiers of liberty ! prepare for battle ; to 
drive these legions of Austria and Prussia from your country, 
which is henceforth to be the land of freedom. Your an- 
cestors, in such times as those of Louis the Fourteenth, were 
sent to war on these very plains, at the mandate of a cruel 
tyrant, and his detestable minions ; while they fought, with a 
forlorn and melancholy valour, their countrymen were all in 
chains, and a grand object for which they were to fight and 
bleed was, that their master might lose none of his power to 
keep them so. You, soldiers of liberty, are called to cele- 
brate in arms the commencement of a new era. By the 
heroic charge that shall dash these armies of insolent in- 
vaders in wrecks and fragments back on the countries from 
which they came, you will confirm the doom that has crushed 
the internal despotism of our country in the dust. The Bas- 
tile is down, there is an end of a profligate court and arbitrary 
power, of the exclusive rights and the arrogance of nobles, 
of the rapacity of farmers-general, and the domination of 
papal priests. The impositions that so long fixed our slavery, 
by fettering our minds, are broken away ; we have exploded 
the notion, as well as defied the power, of despotism ; we 
have proclaimed that all political power essentially resides in 
the people, and that those to whom its exercise is to be en- 
trusted, shall be chosen by the people, and most strictly ac- 
countable to them. We are a part of this emancipated and 
elevated people, and are boldly come forth to maintain their 
cause and our own. Is it not worthy of us to be brave in 
such a cause ? Does not this land of new-born liberty de- 
serve that we should fight for it like lions ? There, in our 
sight, are the armies that are come to make us all slaves 
again. Let us fall upon them directly, and drive them into 
the Rhine." 



383 

Every mind responded to such an appeal ; though imper- 
fectly organized at first, though in various instances unskil- 
fully or unfaithfully commanded, and though many times in 
a state of confusion and defeat, these half-disciplined battal- 
ions were " fraught with fire unquenchable ;" they astonished, 
and after a while intimidated, their veteran antagonists, by- 
returning incessantly to the charge ; they were continually re- 
inforced by more of their countrymen, animated with the same 
powerful sentiment, till at length the most famous legions and 
generals of Europe were overpowere(], and driven away by 
an irresistible torrent. We can remember to have read, in 
the accounts of those times, that one morning, after several 
days of severe conflict, and very partial success, in Alsace, 
General Pichegru signified to the army that he felt it needful 
to give them repose that day ; on which he was informed that 
they testified their disappointment, and expressed a strong and 
general wish to be led again to battle ; they were led accord- 
ingly. — It would be as much beside the purpose to discuss 
here the correctness of that idea of liberty, which created 
such an almost preternatural energy in the people and the 
armies of France, as to notice what a wretched disappoint- 
ment, and what a hateful despotism, were in reserve to ter- 
minate all their prospects. It is sufficient for our object, that 
a bold, grand idea of liberty, involving the annihilation of 
every thing that had oppressed and galled the people, and sent 
their advocates to the Bastile, under the old despotism, and 
quite clear of all counteractive considerations of this and the 
other aristocratical distinction or monopoly to be held sacred, 
and this or the other individual or family to be maintained in 
power,— it is enough that this idea inspired the energy, which 
flung the relics of the invading armies at the palace gates of 
those who had sent them. It is enough that every one can 
imagine in an instant, what would have been the effect in the 
camp of Jourdan or Pichegru, if information had come from 
Paris, of the provisional government, anxious to secure the 
rights and happiness of the people, having settled that, though 
neither a prince of Austria or of Prussia, nor exactly Louis the 
Sixteenth, must be king, yet the allegiance of the nation was 
inviolably due to some individual of the family, the Duke of 
Chartres for instance, on whose accession the government 
would go on in the same wise and popular manner that it had 
done a hmidred years past. 



884 SOUTHEY S CHRONICLE OF THE CID. 

The reader has anticipated all we could say in the applica- 
tion of these hints to the recent movement of the Spanish 
people. We shall content ourselves wdth very few words, as 
there is now probably no great difference of opinion among 
thinking men, relative to the original and progressive proba- 
bilities attendant on this memorable event. One single short 
question disposes of the whole speculation : Has liberty, in 
the sense in which alone it is of importance to a people, ever 
been fairly set before the Spanish nation ? It is of the 
essence of this question, to reflect a moment on the condition 
of the Spanish nation previously to this event ; we mean their 
condition as justly imputable to their own sovereigns, and 
their own system of government, exclusively of what evils 
may have accrued to them of late years from the French 
intrigues and ascendency in their court. And according to all 
accounts, that condition was deplorable. Taken in a collec- 
tive view, the people were ignorant, indolent, poor, dirty, and 
extravagantly superstitious, fond of tawdry shows and cruel 
sports, strangers, in a great measure, to ingenious and 
mechanic arts, stationary in almost all the points of civiliza- 
tion in which the other countries of Europe are advancing, 
hampered by a clumsy and perverse judicature, in short, bear- 
ing the most flagrant marks of an incorrigibly bad govern- 
ment. Thus matters had gone on during the reigns of suc- 
cessive monarchs, and during the reign of probably the last 
of the Bourbons in Spain, Charles the Fourth. At length, in 
consequence of we know not what intrigues and piivate 
arrangements, the sovereignty passed suddenly from him into 
the hands of his son, not, of course, without expostulation and 
repugnance on the part of the father, whose rights, according 
to all orthodox notions on the subject, Avere grossly violated by 
the transfer. All this \vhile, however, a powerful neighbour, 
whose tenets concerning kingly rights, saving and excepting 
those of himself and his royal brothers, are deemed highly 
heretical, had his schemes of transfer prepared, and his ma- 
chines in operation ; and lo ! in a moment both the kings 
vanish from Spain, and " our brother Joseph " succeeds to the 
throne. It was found that the two monarchs had been fasci- 
nated, as we read of unfortunate birds sometimes being, to 
throw themselves directly into the mouth of the great serpent. 
At this juncture began the commotion which has so deeply 
and justly interested all Europe. A just indignation at the 



SOUTHEY S CHRONICLE OF THE CID. 385 

base and treacherous proceedings of Napoleon, rose so high, 
in some parts of the country, as to issue in an energetic call 
of the whole nation to arms. This was a tremendous crisis, 
and a most awful summons ; for it might be held certain, that 
the enemy, defied and challenged in this unexpected quarter, 
and this new manner, would discharge the whole collected 
thunders of his martial empire, and, even if unsuccessful, 
would desperately prosecute the contest with the last battalion 
that would adhere to his standard. And if such would be his 
determination, what a scene the patriots had before them ! 
If the emergency should prove to require it, he would be 
able, at a moderate computation, to bring three hundred 
thousand soldiers, in successive armies, into Spain. It would 
be idle to calculate that such a force, a large proportion of it 
veterans accustomed to victory, and commanded by such a set 
of generals as never M^ere combined in any other service, 
could be everywhere encountered, and finally repelled, by less 
than four or five hundred thousand of the patriots. And if 
the war should continue even no more than six or eight 
months, how many great battles would there be, beside the 
incessant course of partial actions and bloody smirmishes 1 
Would it have been at all an extravagant prediction that, 
during so many months of such a ^var, two hundred thousand 
devoted Spaniards might perish? And then Avhat miseries 
would be sutfered by the defenceless inhabitants, what num- 
bers of aged and sick persons, and women and children, 
would be exposed to terror, to want, and in many cases even 
to death ; what desolation of the country, what destruction of 
habitations, what ruin of agriculture, and what famine, as the 
probable consummation of all ! This picture is inexpressibly 
too faint for the prospect, which was, or ought to have been, 
distinctly presented to the minds of those who first summoned, 
and all who seconded them in summoning, their countrymen 
to combat with the whole power of France. Now then, we 
may ask, solemnly, Mhat was that object, for the attainment 
of which the country was to be laid open to this most gigantic 
and enormous train of horrors 1 What was that ultimate 
transcendent felicity, the thought of which was to inspire such 
multitudes of men with the perfectly new sentiment, a con- 
tempt of wounds and death ; which was to animate the 
mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of these men to urge 
them on to battle, and which was to reconcile the whole 



386 southey's chronicle of the cid. 

population to have their countiy placed, for months, in a situa- 
tion about parallel to that of a forest infested by tigers ? At 
the very least, that object could be no less than the noblest 
system of national liberty that ever blessed any people. 

Let our readers recall to mind the manifestoes, and ad- 
dresses to the people, issued by the provincial Juntas that took 
the lead, and judge whether this was the object. Some of 
those publications were strongly conceived, and eloquently 
expressed. They powerfully expatiated on the treacherous 
arts by which the nation and the royal family had been in- 
veigled, on the excesses committed in some places by the 
French troops, and on the glory of revenge ; on which last 
topic we regretted to see the patriots adopting a language, and 
endeavouring to rouse a spirit, of savage ferocity, tit only for 
the most barbarous age. But the accomplishment of revenge 
could be only a very subordinate object with the patriotic 
Juntas ; nor could it be expected to prove an object adequate, 
in those parts of the country which had not immediately 
suffered or witnessed the outrages committed by the French, 
to stimulate the population to turn their meadows into fields of 
battle, and expose their persons to the sword ; especially as it 
would be obvious that as soon as Joseph should be enthroned, 
the excesses of the French must, even for his sake, cease. 
What, then, it must still be asked, was the grand ultimate ob- 
ject to be attained by so dreadful a war, even presuming it 
must be successful 1 And, as far as we have at any time 
been able to discover, the grand, the sublime object, which 
was to animate the people to such a warfare, to compensate 
its infinity of miseries, and to crown the final victory, was no 
other than a return to the old state of things, with the mere 
exception of French influence, and the mischievous power of 
the Prince of the Peace, at the Spanish court. None of the 
indispensable innovations, none of the grand reforms, for the 
want of which that people had been so long pitied or despised 
by all the civilized world, were specifically held out, as any 
part of the incitement or the prize ; no limitations of the royal 
power, or the royal expenses, no reduction of the privileges of 
the aristocracy, no restraints on ecclesiastical arrogance, no 
political existence to be given to the people, no method of en- 
abling them to participate or influence their government, no 
abrogation of the barbarous municipal regulations against the 
freedom of trade, no improvements of political economy that 



southey's chronicle of the cid. 387 

should contribute to supply clothes to those in rags, and food 
to those almost starving. No, there was nothing of all this 
held out to the people ; they were to draw on them, to fight, 
and to expel, the whole power of France, at the dreadful cost 
that we have described, and then Ferdinand and the old 
government were to be triumphantly restored, and all would 
be well ! Hundreds of thousands of them were summoned to 
rush out gallantly to perish, in order that the remainder might 
continue to be the poor, ragged, forlorn nation, that they were, 
and are. 

If a project for exciting the people to plunge into an un- 
fathomable gulf of miseries and death for such an object, 
may be forgiven to the statesmen and prelates of Spain, 
whose catholic imaginations are so stored with prodigies and 
miracles, what, however, will sober judges hereafter say of 
the politicians of England, at the memorable juncture ? By 
what reach of conjecture will it be possible to explain, how 
they, the enlightened inhabitants of a free country, in which 
they have so often eloquently declaimed on the glory of hav- 
ing permitted no despotism here, on the energy with Mhich 
noble ideas of liberty will inspire a people to resist the armies 
of a tyrant, and on the wretchedness of living under a 
government like that of Spain ; in what way can it be made 
intelligible, how these enlightened politicians should conceive 
it possible to rouse a whole people to arms, at the peril of such 
awful consequences, by any objects held out to them by the 
Juntas ? or should deem it a desirable thing if they could, — 
excepting, indeed, with the mere view of diverting the danger 
a while longer from our own country, and giving, in our stead, 
Spanish victims to the French sabres. 

What was Ferdinand, or any other individual, to the un- 
happy people of Spain, who were to leave their families, to 
have their cottages burnt, to famish, or to bleed for his sake ? 
What had he ever done for them, or attempted to do ? If he 
had been a thousand times more their friend than they had 
ever found him to be, by what law of justice or common sense 
could it be, that countless multitudes should go to be slaugh- 
tered on his account ? — not to notice the absurdity of sum- 
moning a nation to fight for a person who was, as to any 
possible connexion with them, to all intents, a nonentity. 

For a while, we still hoped, that the name of Ferdinand 
would be suffered to sink, by degrees, out of the concern ; and 



388 

that the project would assume, at length, the bold aspect of a 
really popular cause. In this hope, we anxiously waited the 
assembling of the Supreme Junta. At last they assembled, ve- 
rified their powers, and took the oath which they had solemnly 
framed. We read that oath, and have never since, for one 
instant, entertained the smallest hope of the Spanish cause. 
There were some most vague and insignificant expressions in 
that oath, about taking care of the interest of the nation ; but 
its absolute sum and substance was, popery and Ferdinand. 
The first of these, avowed in its utmost extent and grossness, 
we considered, as we have already attempted to explain, as 
enough to ensure the fate of the whole design, on account of 
its aspect relatively to the divine government ; and the latter, 
as furnishing far too insignificant a motive to animate a nation 
to battle. The Junta began by declaring they had no power 
to assemble the Cortez, in other words, that they could do 
nothing for the people ; they went on to restrict the freedom 
of the press, and now, — the world is ceasing to inquire what 
they are doing. 

No room remains for remarks on the measures of our 
government, relating to the vast preparations and armies pro- 
fessedly intended for the assistance of Spain ; what is worse, 
we have no room for adding many remarks on the book which 
has given occasion to this article. 

The Cid (i.e. Lord) Rodrigo Diaz was a most renowned 
hero, of the eleventh century, who was sometimes in the 
service of the Christian monarch of Spain, and sometimes 
maintained himself independent in his conquests from the 
Moorish part of the country. There are several ancient re- 
cords, and an epic poem, concerning him, in the Spanish 
language ; Mr. Southey has formed the present work, by 
combining and harmonizing the several relations together, 
faithfully translating, as he assures us, what he has selected 
from each, and noting, in the margin of each paragraph, the 
work, and the part of the work from which it is taken. The 
translation is in the antiquated English dialect, which appears 
to us to be, in general, pretty successfully supported. 

The story is something between a history and a romance ; 
and Mr. Southey has not attempted to distinguish what is true 
from what is fabulous ; the Spanish literature evidently sup- 
plied no means for doing this, nor would it have been worth 
while, had it been practicable, as the fabulous parts are pro- 



southey's chronicle of the cid. S89 

bably quite as amusing as the true, and give as striking a 
picture of the times. In this view the work is very interest- 
ing. We are transported into an age and country, where 
the gentlemen go out to work in the morning, with their steeds 
and lances, as regularly as the farmers with their team and 
plough, and indeed, a good deal more so. The Cid surpasses 
all his contemporaries for diligence and success in such 
laudable occupation. His course of enterprise is so rapid, 
so uniformly successful, and so much of a piece in other re- 
spects, that in some parts of the book the mind is quite tired 
of following him. In many other parts, however, the narra- 
tive is eminently striking, especially in describing some of 
the single combats, and most of all, in the long account of an 
extraordinary court of justice, held on two young princes or 
noblemen, who had abused their wives, the daughters of the 
Cid. Nothing in the whole library of romantic history can 
exceed this narrative. The Cid appears a humane warrior, 
according to the standard of those times, and yet he could 
calmly be guilty of the most infernal cruelties ; for instance, 
burning alive many Moors, in the siege of Valencia. The 
destruction of " intidels," indeed, in any and every manner, 
seems to have been regarded as one of the noblest exercises 
of Christian virtue. Three or four of his constant companions 
in arms display such magnanimous bravery, and such an 
affectionate fidelity to him, as to excite the reader's interest 
and partiality in no small degree. A prominent feature of 
the story throughout, is the frequent recurrence of religious 
and superstitious ideas, in the discourse of the warriors, iii 
all situations. 



390 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

XX. 

MODERN EGYPTIANS. 



An Account of tlie Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyp- 
tians ; written in Egypt during the Years 1833, 4, and 5; 
partly from Notes made during a former Visit to that 
Country in the Years 1825, 6, 7, and 8. By Edward 
William Lane. 

A CURIOUS and reflective mind will not fall on many subjects 
more attractive than the relation of ancient regions, such as 
history and monuments have recorded them, to the same re- 
gions viewed in their modern and present state. It is striking 
to consider how widely they are, as it were, estranged from 
their primitive selves ; insomuch that the mere local and 
nominal identity has less power to retain them before us 
under the original idea fixed on the place and name, than 
their actual condition has to present them as domains of a 
foreign and alien character. They are seen divested to so 
great a degree, of that which had created a deep interest in 
contemplating them, that we consign them to a distant pro- 
vince of our imagination, where they are the objects of a 
reversed order of feelings. We regard them as having dis- 
owned themselves, while retaining their ancient names, and 
their position on the earth. 

We say, " divested to so great a degree ;" for if the regions 
be eminently remarkable for natural features — mountains, 
rivers, defiles, and peculiar productions — these do, indeed, 
continue to tell something of ancient times. In keeping under 
our view a groundwork of the scenes we had meditated on, 
they recall to us by association what once was there, and is 
there no longer. But they do so to excite a disturbance by 
incongruity. What is there ?iow, rises in the imagination to 
confound or overpower the images of what was there then. So 
that, till we can clear away this intrusion, we have an un- 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 391 

couth blending of the venerable ancient and the vulgar 
modern. 

Again ; there are seen in those territories striking relics of the 
human labours of the remote ages ; which are thus brought 
back more impressively to the imagination than by the most 
prominent features of nature. But these disclaim more decid- 
edly still, in the name of that departed world to which they 
entirely belong, all relationship with the existing economy of 
man and his concerns. They are emphatically solitary and 
estranged amidst that economy. Their aspect, in their gloom 
and ruin, is wholly to the past, as if signifying a disdain of all 
that later times have brought around them. And if, in some 
instances, man is trying to avail himself of some parts or ap- 
pendages of them for his ordinary uses of resort or dwelling, 
we may, by a poetical license of thought, imagine them loath- 
ing the desecration. Still, as the vulgarities do obtrude them- 
selves in contiguity, the contemplatist cannot wholly abstract 
himself from the annoyance. 

Some of those scenes of ruin, indeed, and especially and 
pre-eminently the tract and vast remaining masses of Babylon, 
are placed apart by their awful doom, as suffering no en- 
croachment and incongruous association of human occupancy 
or vicinity. There is no modern Babylon. It is secluded 
and alone in its desolation ; clear of all interference with its 
one character as monumental of ancient time and existence. 
If the contemplative spectator could sojourn there alone and 
with a sense of safety, his mind would be taken out of the ac- 
tual world, and carried away to the period of Babylon's mag- 
nificence, its multitudes, its triumphs, and the divine denuncia- 
tions of its catastrophe. 

Egypt has monuments of antiquity surpassing all others on 
the globe. History cannot tell when the most stupendous of 
them were constructed ; and it would be no improbable prophe- 
cy that they are destined to remain to the end of time. Those 
enormous constructions, assuming to rank with nature's an- 
cient works on the planet, and raised, as if to defy the powers 
of man and the elements and time to demolish them, by a ge- 
neration that retired into the impenetrable darkness of anti- 
quity when their work was done, stand on the surface in so- 
lemn relation to the subterraneous mansions of death. All 
the vestiges bear an aspect intensely and unalterably grave. 
There is inscribed on them a language which tells the inquirer 



392 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

that its import is not for him or the men of his times. Persons 
that lived thousands of years since remain in substance and 
form, death everkistingly embodied, as if to emblem to us the 
vast chasm, and the non-existence of relation, between their 
race and ours. A shade of mystery rests on the whole econo- 
my to which all these objects belonged. Add to this our as- 
sociations with the region from those memorable transactions 
and phenomena recorded in the sacred history, by which the 
imagination has been, so to speak, permanently located in it, 
as a field crowded with primeval interests and wonders. 

It may then be asserted, perhaps, that Egypt surpasses every 
tract of the world (we know not that Palestine is an exception) 
in the power of fascinating a contemplative spirit, as long as 
the contemplation shall dwell exclusively on the ancient scene. 
But there is a modern Egypt. And truly it is an immense 
transition from the supernatural phenomena, the stupendous 
constructions, the frowning grandeur, the veiled intelligence, 
the homage, almost to adoration, rendered to death, and the 
absorption of a nation's living powers in the passion for leav- 
ing impregnable monuments, in which after their brief mortal 
existence they should remain memorable forever, — to the pre- 
sent Egypt as described by Mr. Lane. But this Egypt, as it is 
spread around the wonderful spectacles which remain to give 
us partially an image of what once it was, disturbs the contem- 
plation by an interference of the coarse vulgar modern with 
the solemn superb ancient. At least to a reader who has not 
enjoyed the enviable privileges of beholding those spectacles, 
and so practically experiencing how much they may absorb 
and withdraw the mind from all that is around them, it would 
seem that the presence of a grovelling population, with their 
miserable abodes, and daily employments, combined with the 
knavish insolent annoyance of the wearers of a petty authori- 
ty, must press on the reflective spectator of pyramids, temples, 
and catacombs, with an effect extremely adverse to the musing 
abstraction in which he endeavours to carry his mind back to 
the ancient economy. As to any advantage to arise from con- 
trast, there is no need of it. And besides, the two things are 
too far in disproportion for contrast. Who would let hovels 
and paltry mosques come into comparison at all with the pyra- 
mids and the temple of Carnac ? 

Mr. Lane has surrendered to the antiquarian and imagina- 
tive tribe the vestiges of the ancient country, and strictly ad- 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 393 

hered to his purpose of describing its present state and people. 
This he has done in such a manner that his work may be con- 
sidered as nearly superseding all the slighter sketches convey- 
ed to us in the narratives of the numerous recent travellers. 
He has possessed the advantage over them of a protracted re- 
sidence, of having one special design to prosecute, of a com- 
petent mastery of the-language ; and of possessing a certain 
flexibility of adaptation to the notions and habits of the people, 
by which he has insinuated himself into a familiarity and confi- 
dence with them quite out of reach of any passing visitant. 
The result is a work surprisingly comprehensive and particu- 
lar. His vigilant inquisitiveness has gone into all the detail 
of dress, domestic manners, conventional observances, super- 
stitious notions and ceremonies, ordinary occupations, traffic, 
political economy, official administration, and characteristic di- 
versities of the several sections of the heterogeneous popula- 
tion ; which are exhibited with a minuteness and precision, to 
make us marvel at his untiring patience of investigation. All 
is set forth in the plain language of an honest intention and la- 
bour to give a matter-of-fact account of things, without any 
flourishing off into sentiment or ambitious speculation. It 
could not be so amusing a book as those Avhich have been 
made up of picturesque touches and incidents of adventure ; it 
necessarily partakes of what we are apt to call dry ; but it 
will be the repository to be consulted by every person who 
wants to know any thing about any part or circumstance of 
the character, habits, and condition, of the modern inhabitants 
of the old realms of the Pharaohs. 

The author's observations were chiefly made in Cairo, the 
capital, and its precincts ; but that portion of the country may, 
he says, be taken as very competently representing the ge- 
neral character and state of the nation, and of the Mahomedan 
world to a much wider extent than the Egyptian section ; for, 
says he, 

" In every point of view, INIusr (or Cairo) must be regarded as the first 
Arab city of our age ; and the manners and customs of its inhabitants are 
particularly interesting, as they are a combination of those which prevail 
most generally in the towns of Arabia, Syria, and the whole of Northern 
Africa, and in a great degree in Turkey. There is no other place in which 
we can obtain so complete a knowledge of the more civilized classes of the 
Arabs." 

It is out of the question to attempt any thing like an analy- 



394 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

sis of such a multitude and aggregate of particulars. All we 
can do is to make a few brief notices, here and there, in pass- 
ing over the eight hundred closely printed pages — ^a journey 
through which, though thus commodiously guided and put at 
our ease, it is really not a light adventure to follow the au- 
thor, who had himself, at every step, to make it with the slow- 
ness of the most marked and deliberate attention. Had he 
lived in the early times of the country, he would have been an 
excellent superintending officer to take note of each added 
stone, in one of the huge piles which consumed a whole life 
of a generation of labourers. 

His first observations respect the climate ; which, he says, 
is remarkably salubrious through the greater part of the year ; 
more so in the southern part of the Upper, though the heat is 
10'^ higher there than in the Lower Egypt; where the ther- 
mometer, "in the depth of winter," (an expression of strange 
sound for Egypt,) in the afternoon, in the shade, is at from 50*^ to 
60®; in the hottest season from 90^^ to 100'^; the heat still not 
very oppressive, being attempered by a northerly breeze. In 
default of the more pompous relations between the ancient 
and the modern, there is still in noble superabundance the 
plague of flies, lice, and other insect nuisances. Precautions 
more than formerly are adopted against the invasion of the 
plague, so named by eminence. But in 1835 it was intro- 
duced from Turkey, extended over the whole country, and car- 
ried off in Cairo alone 80,000, one third of the inhabitants. 

There is a very lengthened description, illustrated by nu- 
merous wood-cuts, of the houses, in all their diversities, pro- 
portions, and adjustments. The best of them seem such as 
may well content the "true believers," during their proba- 
tion for the more luxurious abodes promised them by the pro- 
phet ; "but the dwellings of the lower orders, particularly 
those of the peasants, are very mean ; mostly built of unbaked 
bricks ; some of them mere hovels." The villages are raised 
on the progressively accumulating and rising heaps, made by 
the ruin and rubbish of former ones ; thus maintaining a proper 
height above the inundation, by rising in proportion to the con- 
tinual rise of the alluvial plains and the bed of the river. 

The population, of which there is no authentic statement, 
can hardly, Mr. Lane thinks, be estimated at so many as 
2,000,000, since its prodigious diminution by the pasha's 
sweeping conscriptions for his wars, of at least 200,000, that 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 395 

is, a full half of all the men fit for military service. This goes 
beyond the rate of our once terrible neighbour of France ; and 
surely threatens a similar eventual prostration to the minor po- 
tentate. The calculation for the several classes is, Mahome- 
dan Egyptians (peasants and townspeople,) 1,750,000; Chris- 
tian Egyptians (Copts,) 150,000; Osmanlees, or Turks,^10,- 
000 ; Syrians, 5000 ; Greeks, 5000 ; Armenians, 2000 ; Jews, 
5000. 

As dress is a main thing by which mankind all over the 
world wish to be taken account of, our author pays the Egyptians 
the compliment of dissecting and delineating theirs, through 
every article, and fold, and colour, and change, and through 
each grade of society, with a detail and critical precision which 
we are confident no tailor or mantua-maker in all Cairo could 
equal, even if as handy at the pen and pencil as at the needle. 
To us it appears, as shown in the engravings,* very ungainly 
and cumbrous in many of its modes. Draperies so unshaped, 
— and so hung, and loaded, and swathed on the figure, — as 
some of them appear, must impose a total unfitness for action, 
even for walking, more than a short measured amble ; and 
by the very quantity, garment heaped on garment, must greatly 
add to the grievance of heat. They needed not to outvie the 
customary Turkish costumes, in the ambition of casting a 
broad shadow on the ground. But of course this excess is the 
exclusive privilege and grace of the better sort, who can af- 
ford to parade a w^ardrobe, and are exempt from the humbler 
calls to action. The old and approved operation of walking is 
for them nearly out of the question. A handsome race of 
asses has the honour of saving them that trouble. 

Mr. Lane is pleased with the personal appearance of both 
sexes, about the period of maturity. But unfortunately the 
females " generally attain their highest degree of perfection 
at the age of fifteen or sixteen ;" when, and for a few years 
longer, many of them are very beautiful in figure and counte- 
nance ; but are under the doom of thenceforward declining ; 
till they have lost, at the age of forty, all the graces but those 
sometimes retained in the eyes ; which, " with few exceptions, 

* We may as well notice the wood-engravings here, once for all. 
They are after drawings by the author, in number exceeding a hundred : 
not of high pretensions in elegance of art ; but bearing, in their plain 
simplicity, strong marks of faithful representation. They were not meant, 
he says, " to embellish the pages, but to explain the text." 



396 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

are black, large, and of a long almond form, with long and 
beautiful lashes, and an exquisitively soft bewitching ex- 
pression ; eyes more beautiful can hardly be conceived : their 
charming eftect is much heightened by the concealment of the 
other features." We must take the describer's authority for 
what we have some difficulty to conceive, that this effect is 
also greatly heightened by a practice of blackening the edge 
of the eye-lids, both above and below the eye, with a powder 
called kolihl. For the antiquity of the practice, reference is 
made to the example of Jezebel, and to Ezekiel xxiii. 40. 
Another cosmetic device is the well-known use of henna 
leaves, to dye of a yellowish red or a deep orange colour the 
nails, tips of the fingers, palm of the hand, toes, and other 
parts of the feet. 

Children are regarded as a great blessing ; and with a 
reason subject to less exception than in many other parts of the 
world, if, as we are here told, their behaviour to their parents 
as they grew up is always exemplary. As a consequence 
that looks odd at first sight, their childhood is kept in a state 
disgustingly squalid ; even a lady finished off' in dress, and 
scenting with her perfumes the street through which she is 
walking, shall be seen leading her little favourite " with a 
face besmeared with dust, and clothes appearing as if they had 
been worn for months without ever being washed." This is 
from dread of the evil eye, which, vainly coveting the sweet 
creature, would blast it to spite the owner. But the mind is 
worse off than the person can ])e ; the state of education being 
as wretched as political slavery and religious superstition can 
require. The females are not educated at all. Very few of 
even the women of the higher order can read, or have learnt 
to say their prayers. They must not pray in the mosque, and 
need not pray at home. For boys there are numerous schools, 
in which, with the letters, they are taught to recite chapters 
of the koran. Writing is an accomplishment nearly confined 
to those intended for offices, or the services of the mosque. 
One of the very first elements of their instruction is "religious 
pride, with hatred of the Christians, and all sects but their 
own." 

A long chapter on Religion and Laws, after distinguishing 
the religious parties, respectively denominated after the doctors 
whose tenets they have adopted, recites in substance the doc- 
trines and prescriptions of the koran ; and goes through a 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 397 

minute detail of the formularies of devotion, an odious com- 
post of the ideas of the divine unity, power, and goodness, 
with the principles of a vile and virulent superstition ; the 
noxiousness of the latter destroying the practical good of the 
former, and vitiating even the good moral rules and senti- 
ments which are blended in the institute. The grave frivoli- 
ties, and grimaces of the ritual are a worthy decoration of the 
depravity of the principles. The Moslems of Egypt have 
their proportion of formalists and fanatics ; but collectively 
considered, they cannot make very high claims for that con- 
scientious faithfulness of observance, which some of our 
travelling describers of Turkey have taken pleasure in cele- 
brating and exaggerating. In the habits of many there is 
great laxity, and in not a few an almost total neglect. The 
rigours of their grand solemnity of the Ramadan, regarded as 
of more importance than any other religious appointment, 
are unscrupulously melted dow^n in secret by many of the 
wealthy classes. The majority, however, strictly keep the 
fast ; which, says Mr. Lane, " is fatal to numerous persons in 
a weak state of health." The pilgrimage to Mecca and 
Mount Ararat, once in every true believer's life, though nom- 
inally of comprehensive obligation, admits of some com- 
promise and exception in favour of poverty and ill health ; 
*' but many neglect the duty who cannot plead a lawful ex- 
cuse ; nor are they reproached for so doing." The inter- 
dicted wine and spirituous liquors are no strangers in the con- 
cealed recesses of many a Mahomedan dwelling. As to the 
one article of swine's flesh, it seems they are veritably and 
universally conscientious. 

The laws, conformably to the koran, concerning marriage, 
concubinage, and divorce, and the property adjustments in 
each case, are as multifarious as any Mahomedan or even. 
Christian jurisconsult, and as lax in morality as any libertine, 
could well desire. The worthy husband, when he conceives 
any dislike, or perhaps has too many on his hands, has only 
to say, " I divorce thee," or, "Thou art divorced," and to pay 
her some trifle as a return of a part of her dowry, which he 
had kept back from the first against such an occasion. He 
may take her again if the whim should take him, should she 
have no objection ; and in certain cases whether she con- 
sent or not. But a woman cannot separate herself from her 
husband against his will, unless for some very considerable 
18 



398 MODERN EGYPTIANS, 

fault on his part, such as cruel treatment or neglect; nor then 
without a process in the cadi's court. There are, however, 
fully as many provisions in the legal system in favour of 
women, as could be expected where they are held mentally 
and morally of such small account. 

Under the article Religion, it should be noticed that the 
imams are by no means so exclusively sacerdotal, consecrat- 
ed, privileged, and endowed a class as our Christian clergy 
are constituted. One point of distinction is, (rather hard on 
the imams, in the compaiative adjustment,) that they " enjoy 
no respect but what their reputed piety or learning may obtain 
them." Besides this, they are liable, for misconduct, to be 
displaced, with loss of salary. And while in the service of 
the mosque, of which the emolument is very small, they gain 
their livelihood chiefly by other employments, as tradesmen, 
schoolmasters, &:c. 

In looking at the chapter on Government, we must congrat- 
ulate Mr. Lane on Mahomed All's inability to read English. 
Otherwise we should think that if, in case of his being intro- 
duced into the presence, he were to catch sight of his own 
book, lying on the table or divan, it would be rather an alarm- 
ing spectacle. His rapid glance would alternate between the 
book and the visage of despotic power — ^the vulius instantis 
tyrannu For this part of the work is the picture of a nation 
tormented, plundered, exhausted, crushed down to extreme 
misery, under the hoofs of the whole troop of centaurs in au- 
thority. The pasha himself performs in grand fashion, and 
each subordinate official does his part. The people have 
never read of the locusts, and what became of them, in Pha- 
raoh's time ; or they would look with some passionate wishes 
toward the Red Sea. 

It is needless to say, that the term Government in this in- 
stance means nothing of theory. Nor is it a well-organized 
tyranny. Its chief possesses, in the exertion of an iron force 
of will, sufficient ascendency to make the disordered consist- 
ence of the state work to his own purposes ; but not enough 
to reduce it to a system, in which the parts should work to- 
gether as commodiously, with as little secondary mischief, as 
possible, in maintaining and perfecting the one imperial mis- 
chief of a relentless despotism. Indeed it would seem that 
he does not care, as long as that can be maintained, what it 
may cost to the human mass over which it is exercised. As 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 399 

a matter of feeling merely, that is nothing wonderful ; but it is 
somewhat strange that, in simple policy and foresight, he 
should not be more economical of the harassment and con- 
sumption of the living and all other materials M'hich are to con- 
stitute his state ; and the ruin of which must render his do- 
mination worthless to him. By a rapacious monopoly, and a 
taxation which watches every thing that grows just in order to 
crop it, he extinguishes all the incentives to industry and im- 
provement, in the agricultural interest especially, but those ap- 
plied by brute force. One of the most iniquitous, and at the 
same time reckless, of the measures in unsparing prosecution 
is, that of making himself lord paramount, plainly the absolute 
owner, of the land, by taking it away from the proprietors, with 
the semblance of giving them an equivalent or compensation, 
in pensions for life ; which he pays as long as he pleases or 
finds convenient ; and which at all events leave the families 
of the once rightful possessors consigned at last to the condi- 
tion of serfs or of total destitution. He has laid his talons also 
on the endowments of religious and charitable institutions. 
His revenue is understood to amount to three millions 
sterling. 

But the section is occupied chiefly with an account of the 
several courts of law, and other offices of administration. And 
it just tells how every thing is managed as rogues would have 
it ; by bribery, falsification, perjury, oppression of the weak, 
and collusion, as far as the respective corrupt interests of the 
parties will admit of it, among the strong. There is a curious 
detailed relation of a concerted plan to defraud a merchant's 
orphan daughter of her father's property. It had been brought, 
through all due legal formalities, to a prosperous consumma- 
tion — the villains in actual possession — when it was bloM n up 
by so rare a thing as the resolute intervention of a high pub- 
lic officer of iiiflexible integrity. Another story describes an 
act of summary retribution, not surpassed in fantastic barbar- 
ism by any judicial transaction in the whole annals of rude 
tribes and times. We are sorry not to have room to insert it 
at full length, because the admirably graphic and dramatic ef- 
fect is lost in a bare statement of the facts ; w^hich are these : 
The nazir (collecting officer of a village) demanded of a poor 
peasant sixty rivals, equal to about thirty shillings, which he 
was wholly unable to pay, his sole property being a cow, which 
at once supported his family by her milk and ploughed his 



400 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

small piece of ground. The officer seized the cow, had it cut 
up in sixty pieces, and summoned sixty peasants, with a com- 
mand to take each a piece and pay down a riyal, the butcher 
receiving the head in pa} ment for his work. Thus the requir- 
ed sum was realized. The ruined peasant went with his la- 
mentable tale to the superior officer, Defterdar, of the district, 
who instantly ordered before him all the parties, the collector, 
the sixty purchasers, and the butcher. After due, but short 
inquisition, he ordered the butcher to serve out the collector as 
he had the cow, cutting the body in sixty pieces. As the cow 
had been sold at but half its value, he commanded each of the 
former purchasers to take his piece of the collector and pay 
two riyals ; the butcher receiving, as before, the head for his 
trouble. Not a man, during the proceeding, had presumed to 
utter a syllable in remonstrance. The hundred and twenty 
riyals were then given to the poor peasant. 

The mode of living, that is to say, the system (for so it may 
claim to be named) of eating and drinking, with the adjunct 
and supplementary luxuries, is set forth in all its apparatus, 
varieties, and ceremonial, as in practice in the higher classes 
of the city people ; an affair of careful interest and study ; 
though falling far enough short of the sumptuousness and waste 
of certain Christian capitals. This must always be the chief 
resource of combined ignorance, indolence, and wealth. The 
Egyptian gentry, all who can atford to have nothing to do 
but indulge and amuse themselves, are a lazy tribe. Nor is it 
said that they suffer, in any great degree, the plague and pun- 
ishment of laziness in the shape of ennui. It does not appear 
but they get life along with tolerable complacency, between 
their reflections, their gossiping visits and lounges, their reli- 
gious formalities, and their pipes. This last article is a fa- 
vourite and inseparable com{)anion, seen in close fellowship 
with the Moslem all the day long, in his hand, or placed 
beside him, or carried by his attendant when he walks or 
rides. Even the women, the ladies, are in great familiarity 
with it, but have a refined sort of tobacco, of which the smoke 
serves as a kind of perfume. Like other favourites, the pipe is 
made an object of vanity and a subject of decoration, the 
mouth-piece often costing, between material and ornamental 
device, from two to three pounds sterling. 

The tranquillity of indolence and luxury is not so entire but 
■that the stimulus of some bustling occasion is highly welcome. 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 401 

As if for the purpose of contributing this benefit on the widest 
scale, the marriages of persons of any account are celebrated 
in a succession of public shows, processions, and racket, in 
most barbarian contempt of all that good taste would dictate in 
such an affair — if we may be allowed to apply that epithet af- 
ter being reminded that, in society pretending to the most fin- 
ished civilization, that transaction is sometimes profaned with 
proclamation, parade, and noisy hilarity. In odd contrast 
with this flaring and vociferous publicity, described through all 
its shows and changes by our author, is the circumstance that 
the bridegroom is not permitted to see the face of the bride, 
absolutely cannot know whether he shall like her or not, till 
the contract is affirmed, and the whole ceremonial, after sev- 
eral days of it, coming to an end. He is then introduced to see 
her without her veil ; and there is a party waiting outside for 
an appointed sign that he is pleased or content with this first 
glance^ of what he is to be — we were unwittingly going to say 
— looking at for life. But no ; he may rid himself of her when- 
ever he has a mind. The facility of cutting the tie has been 
mentioned already ; but Mr. Lane goes into ampler detail in 
the chapters on marriage and the harem. 

The slenderness of the conjugal bond yields to the men the 
substantial advantage of variety and change, without the 
trouble and expense of polygamy, for which the Mahomedan 
law gives so large a privilege. The pluralists in this line are 
chiefly among the lower order, where, instead of incurring an 
expense, the man may turn the venture to a profit, by taking 
wives who will consent to work for him. But, taking all to- 
gether, Mr. Lane thinks "that not more than one husband in 
twenty has two wives." Sometimes in addition to the one, a 
slave is held in the combined capacity of servant and paramour. 
In exposing the arrangements of the harem, the author repre- 
sents the condition of the inmates as not so consciously unhap- 
py as is commonly imagined ; the wretchedness incidental to 
mental vacuity being averted by employment in ornamental 
works, by much real gayety, and by the liberty, under precau- 
tionary attendance of course, of going on visits and little rides 
about the city. As to the husband's vigilance, we are told that 
any obvious deficiency of it would be deemed by an Egyptian 
lady an affront, as betraying a want of due regard tor her. It 
is needless to mention that all females, but those of the lower 
order, are veiled up to the eyes when they appear in public : 



402 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

and in the house also, whenever there would be a chance of 
their being seen by any of the other sex, except the very few 
who are privileged by relationship. What a degraded esti- 
mate of half the race of rational creatures is implied in this 
whole system of precaution, preclusion, and concealment ! 

The description of the indolent and voluptuous life of the 
higher classes, inhabiting the metropolis and great towns, 
stands in flagrant contrast with the condition of those at the 
bottom of the scale ; especially the peasantry, who are sus- 
tained in their ill-rewarded toils by a diet on which we may 
wonder how they can preserve strength to labour at all, or 
even to live. But how earnestly this poor lot of existence is 
clung to in preference to the military service, may be seen in 
the expedients employed by parents to save their sons from 
that destination. 

It is fortunate for these Moslems not to have a great variety 
of subjects to study ; for the tax on their time and faculties for 
the complete mastery, in knowledge and practice, of the code 
alone of salutations, compliments, and other verbal civilities, 
would leave little chance for their proficiency in other learn- 
ing. There are settled classical forms of speech for all 
manner of social occasions and incidents, even down to that 
of yawning ; on which occurrence the true believer is to ap- 
ply the back of his left hand to his mouth, and say, "I seek 
refuge with God from Satan the accursed." The ungraceful 
act, however, is rather to be avoided as much as may be ; 
and for a much better reason than any thing against it on the 
score of grace or politeness ; " for it is believed that the devil 
is in the habit of leaping into a gaping mouth." It is not 
stated whether that incursion be in any degree attracted by 
the circumstance that the Egyptian mouth is always filled with 
smoke. " The ordinary set compliments in use in Egyptian 
society," says Mr. Lane, " are so numerous, that a dozen 
pages of this work would not suffice for the mention of those 
which may be heard almost every day." Very inconvenient and 
onerous as this appears in one view, it is commodious in another, 
as saving the trouble of any strain on the inventive faculty. 

The void of knowledge is occupied by an ample order and 
disorder of superstitions, to the greater portion of mankind a 
more acceptable mental possession ; inasmuch as it is a thing 
far more easy and of more lively excitement to indulge the 
imagination than to exercise the understanding. Superstition, 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 403 

besides, lias the advantage over sober truth of bringing its 
false creations into more intimate contact with the passions 
of hope and fear, especially the latter — -except in the case of 
persons of the most extraordinary piety. Nay, it presses 
closer on the mind than all the objects of the senses, and in 
many instances constitutes the impressive force of those very 
objects. For example, our author represents the belief of 
these Islamites in Gliin (Genii) as subjecting them to a per- 
petual haunting of their effective good or evil (but especially 
evil) intervention, in all times and places, and in every thing 
they do. These invisible agents, some of them " true be- 
lievers," some of them malignant infidels, denominated 
Effreets, and being the more powerful order, are deemed to 
pervade the-earth and the sky, and to be ready to take offence 
at the most common actions of life ; so that it is prudent to ex- 
claim or mutter, " Destoor,'' that is, "Permission," by way of 
deprecation, on letting a bucket down into a well, lighting a fire, 
or throwing water on the ground. They are the actuating 
spirits of some of the dangerous commotions of the elements, 
such as the whirlwinds of sand. Against the ginee approach- 
ing in that fashion, the most approved charm is to bawl out, 
" Iron, thou unlucky ! " as the genii are supposed to have a 
great dread of that metal. Some of them are believed to 
assume, occasionally or constantly, the form of dogs, cats, or 
other brutes ; and among a number of characteristic anec- 
dotes is the story of what one of the most illuminated sages of 
the country, recently deceased, who had written several works 
on various sciences, used to relate (if seriously, which is im- 
plied) of his attendant ginee in the person of a cat ; evincing 
a debility or perversion of intellect almost incredible. 

The veneration among the Mahomedans for idiots is 
better accounted for than we had imagined ; the case being 
that "the mind of the idiot is (literally) in heaven, while his 
grosser part mingles among ordinary mortals ; consequently 
he is considered an especial favourite of heaven." The order 
of persons holding the repute of saints forfeit none of their 
respect by taking a practical dispensation from the rules of 
morality, decency, and religion. At the head of them is a 
personage of peculiar and pre-eminent sanctity, denominated 
Ckooth; vv^ho is believed to be here, or to be there, but nobody 
can certainly tell where ; for he is never seen so as to be 
recognised at any of the stations supposed to be favoured with 



404 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

his presence. There is so strong a presumption of his being 
ensconsed behind the constantly turned-back half of one of 
the city gates, that 

" Numbers of persons afflicted with the headache drive a nail into the 
door to charm away the pain ; and many sufferers from the toothache 
extract a tooth, and insert it in a crevice of the door, or fix it in some other 
way, to insure their not being attacked again by the same mrlady. Some 
curious individuals often try to peep behind the door, in the vam hope of 
catching a ghmpse of the Ckootb, should he happen to be there, and not 
at the moment m visible. He is believed to transport himself from Mecca 
to Cairo in an instant, and also from any one place to anotber. He wan- 
ders throughout the whole world, among persons of every religion, wbose 
appearance, dress, and language he assumes : and distributes to mankind, 
chiefly through the subordinate welees (saints) evils and blessings, the 
awards of destiny." 

There is a notion among many that the ckootbs are ap- 
pointed in succession by Elijah, whom they consider as the 
Ckootb of his time, and acknowledge that he never died. Some 
amusingly ridiculous stories relating to the powers, vocations, 
and habits of the welees are recited by Mr. Lane, who says 
they are believed by persons who, in many respects, evince 
good sense ; and that to laugh, or express discredit, would 
give great offence. 

The coveted honour of being reckoned among the welees, 
or saints, is conceded, in repute, to a few only of a numerous 
and less sacred order, the Durvveeshes (dervises) ; who still 
are made of some better material than ordinary mortals ; have 
rites of initiation; some not very defined connexion with re- 
ligious offices ; and are classed under four distinctive denomi- 
nations. Some of them figure in the exercise of repeating 
the name of Allah, with a few other words interjected, as long 
as the vocal organs can sustain the task ; " accompanying 
their ejaculations or chants with a motion of the head, or of 
the whole body, or of the arms. From long habit they are 
able to continue these exercises for a surprising length of time 
without intermission." Some of them excel in mountebank 
feats, of thrusting iron spikes into their bodies, eating glass 
or burning coals, and live serpents. But the majority seem 
to employ themselves chiefly in the more ordinary, honest, 
and useful occupations. On some public occasions the author 
witnessed the most ambitious exploits of the fine performers. 
The dancing and whirling exhibition does not appear to have 
equalled what is described as seen in Constantinople. But 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 405 

that of fire-eating with impunity was a more wonder-making 
spectacle tlian any feats of agility could have been. 

But something much more strange than this is done in 
Egypt, and probably no where else. Mr. Lane had heard 
from English residents in Cairo such accounts of a modern 
Jannes or Jambres that it would have evinced an inexcusable 
want of curiosity not to seek an interviews There was intro- 
duced to him a iine-looking man, affable and unaffected in his 
conversation, who had no reluctance or fear to put his powers 
to the test before the most shrewd or suspicious inspector. 
The preparatory ceremony was to write on a paper in Arabic 
(which he readily showed to Mr. Lane, who has given a 
translation) an invocation to two genii, his "familiar spirits," 
named Turshoon and Turyooshoon* This was cut in slips, 
which w^ere successively throw^n together w^ith some incense, 
on the fire in a chafing-dish, w^hile the process of incantation 
was going on, in an indistinct muttering by the magician — 
not, to be sure, a very imposing kind of spell, and more 
adapted to excite suspicion than create credulity. It was 
necessary there should be an intermediate person between 
him and the inquisitive observer. And this might be " a boy, 
not arrived at puberty, a virgin, a black female slave, or a 
pregnant woman ;" a rule of fitness seemingly odd and arbi- 
trary enough. A boy was brought in from the street, by a 
chance selection, made by Mr. Lane himself, from a number 
who were returning from a manufactory. He is very particu- 
lar and positive in asserting that there was not, and could not 
be, any manner of collusion. A reed-pen and ink w^ere sup- 
plied by Mr. Lane himself (as the paper for the charm and 
the scissors for cutting it had also been) at the request of the 
magician ; who then drew " a magic square " in the palm 
of the boy's hand, with Arabic numerals marked on its margin, 
and a blot of ink, less than a sixpence, in the middle. So far 
in sight of Mr. Lane, who has given the diagram on his page; 
what might come next was not to be seen by him, but de- 
scribed by the boy. The spot of ink was to become the 
ground, or scene, or mirror, of the objects required to appear. 
The room being filled with smoke of the incense, the magician 
interrupted his muttering to ask the boy \vhether he saw any 

• In a note Mr. Lane says, *' He professed tome that his wonders were 
effected by the ag-ency of good spirits ; but to others he has said the re- 
verse ; that his magic is satanic." 
18* 



406 MODEEN EGYPTIANS. 

thing, and was answered, " no ; " but soon after, with signs 
of fear, the boy said, " I see a man sweeping the ground." 
He was then directed to call, in succession, for a long series 
of spectacles, some of them consisting of a variety of objects 
and movements ; and he described them distinctly, in form, 
colour, number, and change of action, in such prompt, plain 
manner, as to leave no doubt that they were actually before 
his eyes. One example may suffice : 

" The boy was directed to say, ' Bring the sultan's tent, and pitch it.' 
This he did ; and in about a minute after, he said, ' Some men have 
brought the tent ; a large green tent ; they are pitchmg it;' and presently 
he added, ' They have set it up ' * Now,' said the magician, ' order the 
soldiers to come and pitch their camp around the tent of the sultan ' The 
boy did so; and immediately said, ' I see a great many soldiers with the 
tents ; they have pitched the tents ' He was then told to order that the 
soldiers should be drawn up in ranks ; and he presently said that he saw 
them thus arranged." — lb. p. 353. 

But if it might be suspected that all this, however inexpli- 
cable, was merely a predetermined show of phantasmagoria, 
an adjusted course of spectral illusion, the magician presently 
went beyond any conceivable reach of such an artifice. 

"He now addressed himself to me; and asked me if I wished the boy 
to see any person absent or dead. I named Lord Nelson ; of whom the 
boy had evidently never heard ; for it was with much difficulty that he 
pronounced the name, after several trials. The magician desired the boy 
to say to the sultan, " My master salutes thee, and desires thee to bring 
Lord Nelson ; bring him before my eyes that I may see him, speedily." 
The boy then said so, and almost immediately added, " A messenger is 
gone, and has returned, and brought a man dressed in a black suit of 
European clothes. The man has lost his left arm." He then paused for 
a moment or two ; and, looking more intently, and more closely, into the 
ink, he said, " No ; he has not lost his left arm, but it is placed to his 
breast " This correction made his description more striking than it had 
been without it ; since Lord Nelson generally had his empty sleeve at- 
tached to the breast of his coat ; but it was the right arm that he had lost. 
Without saying that I suspected the boy had made a mistake, I asked 
the magician whether the objects appeared in the ink as if actually before 
the eyes, or as if in a glass which makes the right appear as the left. He 
answered that they appeared as if in a mirror. This rendered the boy's 
description faultless." 

The author mentions in a note that the term here translated 
bJack is equally applied by the Egyptians to dark blue. 

Mr. Lane next called for a native Egyptian of his acquaint- 
ance, then and during many years before residing in England, 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 407 

wearing the European dress, and who had, at the time of 
Mr. Lane's going to Egypt, been long confined to his bed 
by illness. 

'' I thought that his name, one not very uncommon in Egypt, might 
make the boy describe him incorrectly ; though another boy, on the former 
visit of the magician, had described this same person as wearing a Eu- 
ropean dress, hke that in which I last saw him. In the present case the 
boy said, " Here is a man brought on a kind of bier, wrapped up in a 
sheet." This description would suit, supposing the person to be still con- 
fined to his bed, or if dead. The boy described his face as covered; and 
was told to order that it should be uncovered. This he did ; and then 
said, ' His face is pale ; and he has mustaches, but no beard ;' which was 
correct." 

-^ other persons were named, but the boy's descrip- 

i. " imperfect, though not altogether incorrect ; as 

re becoming gradually dim." Another boy 

. onli] -ee nothing ; the magician said he was 

"" s somewhat disappointed, be- 
" ^vhat had been witnessed, 
nds and countrymen, 
of u. "^Ve wish that, to 

accumiii. 'Uustration, he 

li ' '^es, with 

tl 



jbr:>i : ' , ,; J^^^^'^fe • crip- 

tior 

on 

of . 
one • 



f hisow^^ 1^, . . ..at no 

'^'" ^uy knowlc«Jgc. s r naving 

pc': en alluded to, describt'c-. ' ak dress 

'.ai ■ ,>laced to his head, wearu^ and with 

)ITl\:.. and the other raised behina -^ . if he were 
stepp I a w:^t. The description was exactly w - in every re- 

spe?* ■■ -' position of the hand was occasioned by an almost con- 

stai' •<"! tl'it of the foot or leg by a stift' knee, caused by a 

fa'i i . ''T^S' I ^^ assured that on this occasion the boy 

at.3r .1 person and thing called for. On another oc- 

casit ascribed with the most minute correctness, both 

as to . nd I might add several other cases in which the 

mag onishment in the sober minds of Englishmen of 

my c . 56. 

N '. i-i^oo statements being assumed as accurately true to 
matter of fact — and the testimony appears to be such as to pre- 



408 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

elude all doubt — what are Ave to think of the art or power 
which so prodigiously surpasses all known resources of me- 
chanical ingenuity and physical science ? Mr. Lane declines 
to adventure an opinion, resigning the affair to impenetrable 
mystery. But there will be no lack of confidence to pro- 
nounce, and the authority so pronouncing will assume the 
name and tone of philosophy, that there was nothing more in 
the whole matter than artful contrivance ? that there was no 
intervention of an intelligent agency extraneous to that of the 
immediate ostensible agent. But can this assumiption be made 
on any other ground than a prior general assumption that 
there is no such preternatural intervention in the system of the 
world ? But how to know that there is not ? The negative 
decision, pronounced in confident ignorance, is a conceited im- 
pertinence, which ought to be rebuked by that philosophy 
whose oracles it is affecting to utter. For what any man 
knows, or can know, there may be such intervention. T\u\t 
it is not incompatible with the constitution of the worl^; is an. 
unquestionable fact with the unsophisticated beliey^rs in the 
sacred records. And not a few occurren'' \ ' ter history 
have totally defied every attempt at e^ -^j^^ ' v ^^J other 

And now take the facts ^^^'^.^^^^^^\ ^ ^7 ^^'■ 
Lane. First, those that ma^^ ^T^^^T?^^^ ^^^^ '■ — "^ 
the day-time, without cf^^c'eri, "'^'^^^^W^^^^^ ^■^^i ^^^l^ss^ the 
burning and smoke of incense *4«^Efc<^pi^^- f ^"^ ^^ ^ 
ground in all app^ai 0,1^^0 unfit, ti ^^^'^ >^ ^fZ^. '^l ' the spec- 
tacles, there ■• -ere brought, n(/t a " t of some- 
thing like Imagery (which, ho\^e\c ^ V .*^^ ^ ^ --nie suppo- 
sition that the excited state of the yt, ^*V^'"iB ler ihe influ- 
ence of perfumes and strange rites mi^, ^em tcNcreate,}but 
a series of distinct scenes of persons and transactHns, each 
remaining long enough to be plainly described, but su.^ceeded, 
at the interval of a few moments by another, different and 
also of precise delineation. It is easy to fling off the diffi- 
culty by saying it was all done by some juggling device. — 
This cheap philosophy may be quietly put aside. But let the 
greatest adept in all that real philosophers know of science 
and art point out an ascertained principle in nature, by the 
action of which he deliberately believes that he, or any philo- 
sopher, can — nay, rather, by which the philosopher shall 
practically prove that he can — at his mere will, as unaided by 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 409 

optical apparatus as the Egyptian, command the elements 
into the sudden formation of such a series of images, rapidly 
but definitely presented to the eyes, or can impart to the eyes 
themselves the power of instantaneously shaping them. JJut 
the philosopher ! — the thing was done by a person whose phi- 
losophical qualifications our adept would' despise. 

But next the stronger cases : the statement is, that, imme-» 
diately on being called for, there were presented the images 
of persons, unknown to the Magus, far absent, or dead, in 
conspicuous portraiture, with various and very particular 
marks of correspondence to what was known of those per- 
sons by the challengers of his mysterious faculty. Now put 
it to any rational man, who has not attained the wisdom of 
an a priori rejection of the supernatural, whether he can be- 
lieve that such an effect was within the competence of some 
curious art, or some resource of science, in the possession of 
the unschooled Mahomedan ; or within the competence of 
any art or science in the possession of any man in the world. 
If the professor of science shall think so, he will do well to 
go and seek the Egyptian, acknowledge his superiority to all 
the learned world, and solicit to be admitted into the inner 
recesses of the temple of knowledge. 

We are well enough aware that we are exposing ourselves 
to ridicule by these observations. But what signifies the ridi- 
cule of men whose pride turns exactly on their ignorance ; 
who deride the idea of any preternatural intervention when 
their utmost faculty cannot reach to apprehend the very possi- 
bility of effects which are placed before them as facts ? It 
would be amusing to see the shifts to be resorted to in this 
total ignorance on the one hand, to authorize a confident 
affirmation of certainty on the other. Of course any thing 
rather than admit the occasional activity on earth of any other 
actors than man and what is called nature. 

In a kind of summary estimate of the Egyptian character, 
the author observes that it is considered among the Moslems 
as the highest honour to be religious. Hence no small 
measure of Pharisaism and hypocrisy. Hence also the pro- 
fane habit of ejaculating the name of the Supreme Being on 
all manner of occasions, even the most trifling or indecent. 
The only real reverence seems to be for the prophet, for whom 
the feeling is idolatrous. His name is held so sacred that the 
pasha has been reproached for the impiety of having it, as 



410 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 



being one of his own names, branded on his horses and 
camels. Their regard for the sanctity of the Koran is mani- 
fested in every imaginable way, except that of conformity to 
what there may be of most value in its precepts. There are 
but few, Mr. Lane thinks, who are really unbelievers. There 
is no disposition now to make converts ; they say " the num- 
ber of the faithful is decreed by God, and no act of man can 
increase or diminish it." The belief in predestination has 
the effect, in men, of producing a wonderful degree of resig- 
nation, or apathy, in all distresses and calamities, and in the 
approach to death. Not so, he says, with the women, who 
give vent to their grief in the most extravagant cries and 
shrieks ; whether because they are not taught the doctrine, 
or will not believe it, or cannot understand what consolation 
it is to be told that misfortune which must be, must be, is not 
said. There is much benevolence and charity to the poor ; 
this, however, is on a calculation of being paid, and overpaid, 
for it elsewhere. Generosity and cupidity are oddly combined, 
a disposition to overreach and extort, Mdth a readiness to 
aftbrd relief in distress. A consequence of the latter is a su- 
perabundant swarm of beggars. In spite of the formidable 
penalties to female infidelity, there is a strong propensity to 
licentious intrigue. Several curious stories are related of 
illicit adventures, involving plenty of adroitness, ludicrous in- 
cident, hazard, and revenge. The women, while on the one 
hand kept under rigid restriction and guardianship, are on the 
other systematically, and Mr. Lane says, even intentionally, 
incited to a voluptuous disposition, by the spectacle of 
lascivious dances, and the hearing, screened from sight by 
lattices, of immoral songs and tales. The humanity of the 
people, toward both human beings and brutes, is asserted by 
him to have suflered a great deterioration since his former 
visit to the country ; acts and habits of cruelty, to animals 
especially, having now become obtrusively offensive, and rob- 
beries and murders being of much more common occurrence. 
" The increased severity of the government seems, as might 
be expected, to have engendered tyranny, and an increase of 
every crime, in the people." 

The account of the popular amusements, many of them 
frivolous, and some worse, goes, however, into a very long 
description of the more mental one of listening to the recital 
of romances, by men who make it their profession, and qualify 



MODERN EGYPTIANS. 411 

themselves by a lively and dramatic manner of narrating. 
The author has sketched out the course of surprising adven- 
tures through several of the eventful and fantastic stories, re- 
minding us of the Arabian Nights. They will tend to retain 
something of the imaginative and poetic, among a people 
whom so many circumstances have operated to reduce to a 
depressed, coarse, and slavishly fixed condition, so much in 
contrast to the wild and boundless freedom of the Arabs. 
The monotony of life is relieved at intervals by the annual 
return of several great festivals, especially that which dis- 
tinguishes the beginning of the Mahomedan year, and that 
which celebrates the birth of the prophet. But the most 
lively excitement seems to be that occasioned by the return of 
the caravan of pilgrims from Mecca. The author has 
described much at large, and in a very picturesque manner, 
the signs of eager expectation, the mingled joy and appre- 
hension at the arrival of the intelligence and the precursors 
of its near approach ; the rush of the inhabitants out of the 
city to meet their friends, or to see whether they and their 
friends are ever to meet ; the delight of some on receiving 
them back, and the passionate grief of others, chiefly the 
w^omen, on finding that those they inquired for had been 
arrested by death, or (the year in which the description was 
wn-itten) the hardly less disaster of the seizure of a thousand 
of them for the army. There are passed in view the varied 
appearances of the masses and groups as they came on ; the 
pompous procession of a kind of ark or chest, containing 
nothing, but considered as an emblem of royalty, always ac- 
companying the caravan, by a custom perpetuated on the 
strength of a story of a Queen of Egypt, who, many cen- 
turies since, had travelled in such a vehicle ; and lastly, the 
excitement and bustle in the city, on such a new influx of holi- 
ness as these pilgrims had brought back from the birth-place 
and tomb of the prophet. 

But here a consideration of the disproportionate space we 
have already occupied, compels us to make an abrupt conclu- 
sion, leaving a large portion of the work for the curiosity of 
indefatigable readers. We are so far from the end of the 
Hercynian forest, that we have nothing for it but to make a 
resolute bolt sideways to get clear. There remain the sub- 
jects of trades, games, music, festivals, funeral rites, measures, 
weightSj and moneys, female ornaments, Jews, Copts, late in- 



412 MODERN EGYPTIANS. 

novations, and various others. We cannot enough admire 
the untiring and unlimited inquisitiveness, accurate observa- 
tion, and patience of detail, which have wrought out so com- 
plete a panorama of the nation. 

There is one observation which it would hardly be right to 
forego. It respects the pi'ice at which our author obtained a 
knowledge of some things not ordinarily accessible to the 
inspection or inquiries of the Christian djowrs. We shall not 
impute to him an indifference to the question of what is the 
true religion ; but we think the accommodation in which he 
seems to ha' e habitually allowed himself, to the extent some- 
times of a direct practical conformity to the prescribed for- 
malities of Mahomedism, was not compatible with fidelity to 
the religion with which that hateful imposture is at mortal 
enmity. 



I N ]:> E X 



A. 



Tase. 
110 
249 
275 

288 



AbstruseneFS of Coleridge, 
Account of, Beattie, James 
" Blair, Hugh, 

" Hume, David, 

" Modern Egyptians, 390 

Achilles - - - .171 
Adaptation of Christianity to 

man, - - - - 13 

Advocates of Justice, - . 67 
Algiers, slavery in - . 77 

Amusement, - - - 222 

Analogy between the word and 

works of God, - - - 14 
Analogy of Providence and 

Redemption, ... 39 
Angels, description of - - 44 
Antichrist Roman, the - 107 

Apostacy. the Romish - - lOG 
Aquinas, Thomas - - 108 

Arabian Nights' Entertain- 
ments, - - - - 411 
Argyle, proceedings of, in Scot- 
land, - - . 142 
death of - - 142—146 
Arrogance of science, - . 15 
Ascendency over man, - 51 

Association, effects of - - 68 
Astronomical Discourses, - 13 
Astronomy, - - 14, 17 

Atoning sacrifice, - - 38 

Attributes divine, - - 41 

Augean stable of the Antichris- ' 

tian Apostacy, ... 1G6 

B. 

Babylon, . - - .391 
Ball Alexander, character of 9:2 
Barbauld Mrs., Hymns by . 155 j 



Pa^e. 
Baxter Richard, - . .361 
Beattie, James, account of - 249 
criticisms by . - 261 
death of . - 264 

egotism of - .259 
" Essay on Truth" by 256 
flattery of . - 260 
interview of, with 

George III. - 258 

Letters by - - 258 

" IMinstrel" by . 256 

Poems by - - 256 

Sabbath breaking, by 263 

" Soul Doctor," a . 263 

style of . . - 259 

youth of . - 253 

Bible, indgfinite phrases of . 51 

Biography, dissertation on 1 73 — 180 

ecclesiastical - 356 

remarks on - 249 

Blair, Hugh, account of - 275 

" associates of . . 286 

*' character of . 276, 285 

" death of - - .286 

" sermons by - 277 — 284 

" writings of - . 275 

Boak-makinjj, craft of . .201 

Btitit-h Statesmen, . - 173 

Buckingham, Duke of - .196 

Burke, Edmund, - - .113 

Burleigh, Lord . . - 189 

C. 

Cairo, ..... 393 

Cambria, Fall of - . . 332 

Carr's Stranger in Ireland, - 317 
Cecil, history of . . 189,194 
Chalmers, Astronomical Dis- 

courses by - - - 13 



414 



INDEX. 



Page. 
Character of men, justice to 
the 176 

Charles I. of Britain, . - 197 
" execution of - 138 

Charles II. dissohition of Par- 

hament by - 139 

" reign of - .138 

Christian evidence, - 41, 42 

" Christian Hercules," the - 106 
Christian Teachers, - .27 
Christianity — 

" adaptation of, to 

man, - .13 
" analogy of, to the 

works of God, 14 

" evidences of 13,41 

*♦ morality of - 13 

Chronicle of the Cid, . - 370 

Church patronage in Britain 

and Ireland, - . . 153 
Cid, chronicle of the . . 370 
Clarke's Demonstration of the 
Being and Attributes of 
God, . . . .208 

Clerical Education, - - 151 
Coleridge, Samuel T. 

" abstractedness of 

his thoughts, - 97 
'• abstruseness of 98,110 

•' comparisons of - 97 

" difficulty in com- 

prehending of - 101 
*' Friend the, by - 89 

" independence of his 

thoughts, - 96 

*• language of - 101 

" metaphors of - 99 

" obscurity of - 111 

" on the French re- 

volution, - - 104 
" originality of, in 

style and thought 

101, 102 

" reach of thought by 96 

*' recollections of - 108 

" religious opinions of 108 

Coleridge's " Friend," - - 89 

Condescension, divine - - 32 

Connection between matter and 

mind, .... 20 
Contest for the ascendancy over 
man, - - - - 51 



Page. 
Correspondence of Franklin, 231 
Cottle's Fall of Cambria, . 332 
Cottle's recollections of Cole- 
ridge, - . - . 108 
Country gentlemen, duties of 172 
Criterion of morality, - .104 
Cromwell, OHver . . 54, 138 
Cultivation of memory, . 150 
Curates in the established 
Church of England and Ire- 
land, . . . .154 



De Witt, John - . - 117 
Death of Gaul, - - - 349 
Defective standard of morals, 265 
Defects of memory, - .150 
Defence of the stage, . .217 
Depravity of the heart, - 220 

Discipline mental. . - 104 

Discourses on Astronomy, . 13 
Discourses on the Amusements 

of the Stage, - - - 217 
Dispensation of the Messiah, 30 
Dissension among the higher 

Intelligences, ... 52 
Diversions of Purley, - . 76 
Divine attributes, - - 41 

Divine condescension, . . 32 
Divine goodness manifested in 

redemption, - . .41 
Divine incarnation, the . 38 

Divine interpositions, . . 14 
Divine mind, the ... 36 
Divine power, - - 34, 35 
Divine wisdom, - . 34, 35 

Doig, Dr 215 

Duelling, .... 168 
Dunning, Mr. - . . 57 
Duties of Religion, - . 27 

E. 

Earth, comparison of, with the 

universe, - - 28 

" objection of Infidehty 

from ... 28 

Ecclesiastical biography, . 356 
*' dominion, . 189 

Edge WORTH, Maria — 

" defectsof her writ- 

ings, . 267—273 



INDEX. 



415 



Page. 
Edoewortii, Maria — 

" moral tendency of 

her tales, - 273 
" object of her writ- 

ings, - - 265 
•* qualities of her 

works, - - 273 
" Tales of Fash, 
ionable life," by 265 
Edoreworth R. L. " Professional 

Education," by - - 147 

Education, military - - 160 

" naval - . . 163 

" of a Curate, - 154 

" " Prelate, - 154 

•' " Rector, - 154 

♦* private - - 155 

" professional - 147 

Effects of evil companionship, 67 

Egypt — 

" administration of laws in 399 
" antiquity of- . .391 
" children in - - - 396 
*' Ckootbs of - - - 404 
" climate of - - - 394 
" Durvveeshes of - - 404 
" government of - - 398 
" idiots in - - .403 
" inhabitants of - - 395 
" laws of - - - 397 
" monuments of - - 391 
" Nazii a of, punishment by 399 
" population of - - 394 
" religion of . - - 396 
" Weleesof - - - 404 
Egyptians, — ... 390 
amusements of the 410 
conjugal bond of 

the . 397, 401 

dancing exhibitions 

of the - - 404 
defective knowledge 

of the - - 402 
divorces among the 

397, 401 
domestic habits of 

the - . 400 
dress of the - 395 
enchantments of the 405 
examination of their 
phantasmagoria, 

408, 409 



Page, 

Egyptians, eyes blackened by 396 

" hypocrisy of - 409 

" indolence of - 400 

" luxury of - - 401 

" phantasmagoria by 405 

Saints of - - 403 

Elizabeth, reign of - - ] 92 

Eloquence, modes of - - 159 

Elvves, the Miser, - - 58 

English eloquence, - - 159 

Epic poetry, disquisition on 332 — 335 

Erroneous opinions, suppression 

of, . ... - 293 
Errors of party spirit, - .104 
Errors respecting taxation, - 104 
Evangelical theory, - . 38 
Event at Nuremberg, - - 106 
Evidence and probability, - 39 
Evidences of Christianity, . 13 
" adaptation of to man 13 
" analogy between the 
word and works 
of God, - - 13 
•• divine interpositions, 14 

" excellent morality of 13 
" force of - 41, 42 

♦' knowledge superhu- 
man, - - 13 
** Miracles, - - 13 
Morality of - - 13 
" Prophecies, - - 13 
Evil associations, - - 67 
Evil, prevalence of - - 46 
Evils of the stage, - - 221 
Eyre, Chief Justice - - 82 



F. 




Fall of Cambria, . 


. 332 


•' character of 


. 336 


Fashionable Life, 


. 265 


Ferrar Nicholas, . 


. 368 


Fitzherbert Mrs. . 


. 76 



Forbes, account of Dr. Beattie, 
by 249 

Fox, Charles James, — . 76 

" Career of, in imagination, 

115—118 
" character of - .113 

" coalition of, with Lord 

North, - . - 123 
" contrast of - - - 119 
*' death of - - - 119 



416 



INDEX. 



Page. 
Fox, defective morality of - 141 
" dissipation of - .121 

" exertions of - - 119 

" history of James II. by 113 
" moral features of - - 114 
" oratory of - - - 114 
" power of, as a public 

speaker, . 114,120,121 
** uselessness of his elo- 

quence, - - - 124 
" want of virtue in - 121 

*' warning to Statesmen by 125 
Fox John, " Acts and JMonu. 

uments," by - - - 359 
Franklin, Benjamin, — - 231 
" correspondence of 231 

" creed of - - 247 
" deficiency of - 233 
" letter of to Mather 245 
Priestley 244 
Stiks 245, 247 
*' letters by, on Ameri- 
can politics, - 239 
* ' letters from , on the ne- 

gotiutions for peace 233 
♦* love of the useful by 236 
'• Mentor of America, 

the - - - 237 
♦' miscellaneous letters 

by - - - 243 
" political instructions 

by . . . 237 
" self-command of - 235 
*' superiority to worldly 

honour, by - 237, 242 

Frederic the Great, - - 151) 

French eloquence, - - 159 

French Revolution, - 54, 78 

" celebration of the . 79 

" Coleridge's view of the 104 

Friend, the, by Coleridge . 88 

" character of the - 89 

'• properties of the - 96 

Fuller, Andrew, — 

" Consistency of the doc- 
trine of Redemption 
with the magnitude 
of Creation, by - 15 
" Gospel its own witness, 

by ... 15 

" View of the Divine 

Government, by - 16 



Fuller A. Wicked, misery of 
the, accounted for, by 



Page. 
16 



G. 

Garrick David,— - - 262 

Gaul, death of - - - 349 

Germany, letters from - - 105 
God, reflected by the starry 

heavens, ... - 26 
Grant's Essays on the Super- 
stitions of the Highlanders, 339 
" Grandeur of plain sense," - 114 

H. 

Hampton Court (Conference, - 365 
Hurdwicke, Chancellor - 207 

Harmony of religion and science, 14 
Hastings, Warren - - 77 

Henry VIII. character of - 185 
Hercules, the Christian - 106 

Hcrschell's telescope, - - 23 
Highlanders, superstitions of 339 
Highlands of Scotland, moral 

phenomena of - - - 345 
Hill's account of Blair, - 275 

History, disquisition on 125 — 132 
Home Henry, memoirs of - 199 
Home George, Prelate of Nor- 

wich, - . - - 56 
Howard John, the Philanthro- 
pist, - - - - 117 
Hume, David, — . - . 288 
" character of . - 137 
" connection of, with 

Rousseau, . 296 

death of - - 298 
Essays by - - 292 

" History of England, 

by . - 137,295 
" Inquiry concerning 
the human under- 
standing, by - 292 
" Inquiry into the prin- 

ciples of morals, by 292 
" Remarks on his 

death, - 299—302 
" Residence of, at 
Paris, Turin 
and Vienna, 296 
" Treatise of human 

nature, by - - 290 
Youth of - - 290 



INDEX. 



417 



Page. 

58 
36 
229 
38 
51 



I. 

Ignorance, specimen of 
Immensity of the Universe, - 
Impiety of the theatre, 
Incarnation, divine 
Indefinite phrases in the Bible, 
Infidelity — objection of, from 
the comparative littleness of 
our globe, ... 28 

Inhabitants of other worlds, 45 
Insects, minuteness of - 36, 37 
Intelligences, the higher, dis- 
sensions among - - 52 
Interpretation, rule of - - 51 
Iheland, — - - - - 317 
" Peasantry of - 324 
" Stranger in - - 317 
'* Travelling vehicles 

in . - - 318 
Irish bngs, - - - .326 
Irish people, character of - 323 



James I. " King craft" of - 196 

James II. a Papist, - - 141 

history of - - 113 

" manuscripts of - 134 

" reign of - - 141 

Jesuits, education by the - 150 

Jezebel, ^. - . - 396 

Junius, ... 65, 69 

Justice, defenders of - - 67 

Justice to the character of men, 176 

K. 

Kames, Lord - - - 199 

" Essays by, on Moral- 

ity and Natural 
Religion, - - 213 
♦' Elements of Criti- 

cism by - 200, 215 
" Letters of - - 206 
*' Sketches of the his- 

tory of Man, by 215 
•' Kenyon, Chief Jus. 

tice ... 57 
Killamey, lake of - - .327 
Kirwan, Dean ... 329 
Knovi'ledge, superhuman - 13 



Lake of Killamey, 



. 327 



Page. 
Lane's Account of the Modern 

Egyptians - . - 390 

Law of nations, - . - 104 
Law, profession of - .172 

Lawfulness of the Stage, . 219 
Letters from Germany, - .105 
Letters of Lord Kames . 206 

Lexmgton, battle of - .72 
Life of Hugh Blair, - . 275 
Lives of British Statesmen, . 1 73 
Lord Kames, memoirs of . 199 
LuTHKR, Marti a 

'' Skirmish of, with Satan, 1 06 
" the Christian Hercules, 106 

M. 
j Macdiarmid, history of British 

Statesmen, by . - .173 

j Magnitude of creation, - 28 

I " of the stars, - 23 

Man, ascendency over - 51 

Man's moral history known in 

other worlds, . . - 43 
Mansfield, Judge ... 64 
Marriage of the Prince of 

Wales and Mrs. Fitzherbert, 76 
Material universe, the . 22, 24 
Matter and mind, the connec- 
tion between, ... 20 
Mediator, the ... 50 
Medical profession, the . 172 

Mehemet Ah, - - .398 
Memoirs of John Home Tooke, 54 
Lord Kames, . 199 

Memory, cultivation of .150 

" defects of - .150 
Mental discipline, - .104 

Messiah, dispensation of 30, 49 
Metaphysical researches 208 — 213 
Middlesex election, the . 62 

Military education, . - 161 
Minuteness of insects, - 36, 37 
Miracles, - - - .13 
Monmouth, Duke of, invasion 

of Britain, by - .142 

Montague, Mrs. - . - 207 

Moral history of man, known 

by the inhabitants of other 

parts of the universe, - 43 

Morality, criterion of . .104 

More, Thomas, life of - - 181 

'• memoirs of, by Cayley, 185 



418 



INDEX. 



Pnge. 

More, persecution by - - I87 

" trial and death of . I85 

N. 
National glory, - - - IfiG 
" privilege, - - 69 

right, ... 69 
Nations, law of - - .104 
Nature, philosophy of - - 303 
Naval education, - . .161 
Nebulae, .... 24 
Newton, Isaac ... 29 
Number of stars, ... 23 
Nuremberg, tragical event at 105 

O. 

Ossian, poems of - - 345 

P. 

Palcy's criterion of morality, 104 
Paradise Lost, ... 52 
Party spirit, errors of . - 104 
Person of the Mediator, . 50 

Philosophy of Nature, - . 303 
Phrases ol the Bible, indefinite 5 1 
Pitt, William - - 75, 83 

Plagues of Egypt, - - 19 'J 

Planets, - - . 19, 22 

" inhabited, . - 19 

Plumptre's defence of the stage, 217 
Plurality of worlds of intelli- 
gent beings, ... 46 
Popish cstablii^hment, - .189 
Popish plot, - . . ] 3fS 

Porson, Professor ... 84 
Prevalence of evil, . - 46 
Price, Dr. - . - . 7() 
Prince of Wales, . . . 76 
Private education, - - 155 
Probability of evidence, - 39 

Profession of the Law, - .172 
Professional education, - - 147 
" principles of - 148 

Prophecies, - . . - 13 
Providence and Redemption, 

analogy between - - 39 
Public hfc, - - . .172 
Puritans, sufferings of . .19 

R. 

Recollecticns of Coleridge, - 108 
Redemption and Providence, 

analogy between . 39 



Page. 
Redemption, divine goodness in 41 
Rcid, Dr., Character of . 207 

Religion, duty of - . - 27 
Religion, harmony of, with 

Science, - ... 14 
Religious vitality, semblance of 52 
Rodrigo Diaz, ... 388 
Roman Antichrist, the . - 107 
Rousseau and Hume, . » 296 
Rousseau's Discourse on Man, 277 
Rule of interpretation, - 51 



S. 

Sacrifice as atonement, - 38 

Scenery, influence of, on the 

mind and heart, . - 303 
Science, arrogance of . - 14 
" harmony of, with religion, 14 
Scotland, tyranny of Charles 

TI. over - . - .140 

Semblance of religious vitality, 52 

Sermons by Blair, - - 277 

" character of . 277—283 

" defects of - . 281 

" figures of - . 279 

" language of . . 277 

" merits of . - 277 

" popularity of - 275—283 

Sheridan, Richard B. . - 79 

Sular System, - . .19 

" Soul Doctor," a - - 263 

Soiithey's Chronicle of the Cid, 370 

Spain, aftairs of - 371 — 389 

Stage, the defence of - - 217 

Stars, fixed - ... 24 

" inhabited ... 26 

" magnitude of . - 23 

•' number of . . 23 

State Trials, effects of . - 83 

Stephen's memoirs of John 

Home Tooke, ... 54 
Stewart Dugald, character by 207 
St. Pierre, Eustace . .117 
Strafl:brd, Earl of . . 195 

Stranger in Ireland, - . 317 
Styles on the Theatre, - - 230 
Superstitions of the Hign- 

landcrs, .... 339 
Suppression of erroneous opin- 
ions, . . . - 293 
Sydney, Algernon - - 137 



INDEX. 



419 



T. 



Page. 



Talcs of fashionable life, - 265 
Taxation, errors concerning - 104 
Tclescopog, - - - .23 
Herschel's - - 23 
Temple's correspondence of 

Franklin, 
Theatre, character of the 
" depravity of the 

" impiety of the 

" never can become 

good 
" picture of an imag- 
inary one - 
" supporters of the 

Theories of philosophers, 
TooKE, John Home 

" abandons the priesthood, 70 
*' advertisement by, on 
battle of Lexington, 
*' a great talker, - 
" appearance of, before 
the H. of Commons 
" attack by, on the Speak- 
er of the H. of Commons 
" becomes a priest of the 

establishment, - 
" conduct of, at the Mid- 

dlcscx election, 
" contests the election 

for Westminster, - 
*• correspondence of, with 

Junius, 
" correspondence of, with 

Wilkes, 
*' death of . 
" defeats Lord IMansfield, 
" defends Mr. Tooke, 
♦♦ diseases of 
" education of - 
*' efforts of, for freedom, 69, 70 
" elevation of, to Parlia- 
ment, - - - 84 
" habits of - - .59 
*' imprisonment of . 73 
»' in the Tower, . . 81 
" inconsistency of . 60 
" letter of ... CO 



231 

228 
220 
229 I 

220 

223 
222 
104 

54 



72 

85 

72 

71 

58 

63 

77 

69 

64 
87 
64 
71 
84 
57 



" letters of, from Italy, 62 

" letters of, to Junius, - 65 

" moral constitution of 85 

" morals of - . 62 

'* objects of . - 87 
" opinion of, concerning 

Warren Hastings, - 76 

" preaching of - - 62 
*' refused admission to the 

counsellor's practice 74 

" Sultanic look of - 85 

" Studied medicine, - 59 
" Tract against the 

American war by - 75 
" travels in France and 

Italy, - - 58,62 
" "Two Pair of Por- 
traits" by - . 75 
Trial of AVarren Hastings, 77 
Truth, laws of - - - 104 

U. 

Universe, immensity of - 36 

" material, the - 22, 24 

V. 

Vindicators of Justice, . - 67 
Vitality religious, semblance of 53 

W. 

Walker, Professor - . 207 

War, horrors of - - .161 
W^artburg, castle of - - 106 
Washington, George - .138 
Wentworth Thomas, life of - 195 
Westminister election, - 77 

Whitfield, George, - .247 
Whitgift, life of - . - 31)3 
Wilkes, John . - 60,62 

" Wise Club," the - . 253 

Word of the Almighty, 13, 27 

Wordsworth the Poet, - - 95 
Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical 

Biography, ... 356 
Works of God, . - 13,27 

Worlds of intelligent beings, 47 
Writings of Hugh Blair, - 275 



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37 1-2 cents. 

In this edition every passage of Scripture has been compared and verified. The volume is 
like an arranged museum of gems, and precious stones, and pearls of inestimable value. The 
divine promises comprehend a rich and endless vaiiety. — Dr Wardlaw. 

COOLEY— THE AMERICAN IN EGYPT. 

With Rambles through Arabia-Petrsea and the Holy Land, during the years 
1839-40. By James Ewing Cooley. Illustrated with numerous steel En- 
gravings, also Etchings and Designs by Johnston. One handsome volume, 
octavo, of 610 pages. $2 00. 

No other volume extant gives the reader so true a picture of what he would be likely to see 
and meet in Egypt. No other book is more practical and plain in its picture of precisely what 
the traveller himself will meet. Other writers have one account to give of their journey on paper, 
and another to relate in conversation. Mr. Cooley has but one story for the fireside circle and 
the printed page. — Brother Jonathan. 

CHAVASSE— ADVICE TO MOTHERS 

On the Management of their Offspring, during the periods of Infancy, Child- 
hood, and Youth, by Dr. Pye Henry Chavasse, Member of the Royal Col- 
lege of Surgeons, London, from the third English edition, one volume, 
18mo. of 180 pages. Paper 25 cents, cloth 37 1-2. 

All that I have attempted is, to have written useful advice, in a clear style, stripped of all 
technicalities, which mothers of every station may understand. * * * I have adopted a con- 
versational form, as being more familiar, and as an easier method of making myself understood. — 
Extract from jiulhor's Preface. 

COPLEY.-EARLY FRIENDSHIPS. 

By Mrs. Copley. With a frontispiece. One volume, 18mo. 37-12 cents. 

A continuation of the little library of popular works for " the People and their Children." Its 
design is, by giving the boarding-school history of a young girl, whose early education had been 
conducted on Christian principles, to show the pre-eminent value of those principles in moulding 
and adorning the character, and enabling their possessor successfully to meet the temptations 
and trials of life. It is attractively written, and full of interest. — Com. Adv. 

COPLEY.-THE POPLAR GROVE: 

Or, little Harry and his Uncle Benjamin. By Mrs. Copley, author of "Early 
Friendships," &-c., «fec. One vol. 18mo. frontispiece, 37 1-2 cents. 
An excellent little story this, showing how sound sense, honest principles, and intelligent 
industry, not only advance their possessor, but, as in the case of Uncle Benjamin the gardener, 
enable him to become the benefactor, guide, and friend of relations cast down from a loftier sphere 
in life, and, but for him, without lesource. It is a tale for youth of all classes, that cannot be 
read without profit. — JV*. F. American. 

CORTES.— THE ADVENTURES OF 

Hernan Cortes, the Conqueror of Mexico, by the author of " Uncle Philip's 

Conversations," with a Portrait. One volume, 18mo. 37 1-2 cents. 
Forming one ofthe series of " A Library for my Young Countrymen." 

The story is full of interest, and is told in a captivating style. Such books add all the charms 
of romance to the value of history. — Prov. Journal. 

COTTON.-ELIZABETH; OR, THE EXILES OF SIBERIA. 

By Madame Cotton. Miniature size, 31 1-4 cents. 
Forming one ofthe series of " Miniature Classical Library." 
The extensive popularity of this little tale is well known. 

6 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

COWPER— THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

Of William Cowper, Esq., including the H3'mns and Translations from Mad. 
Guion, Milton, &c., and Adam, a Sacred Drama, from the Italian of Bat- 
tista Andreini, with a Memoir of the Author, by the Rev. Henry Stebbing, 
A. M. One volume, 16mo., 800 pages, $1 50, or in 2 vols. $1 75. 

Forming one of the Series of "Cabinet Edition of Standard British Poets." 

Morality never found in j^cnius amore devoted advocate than Cowper, nor has moral wisdom, 
in its plain and severe precept.-;, been ever more successfully combined with the delicate spirit of 
poetry than in his works. Mo was endowed with all the powers which a poet could want who 
was to be the moralist of the world— the reprover, but not the satirist, of men — the teacher of 
simple truths, which were to be rendered gracious without endangering their simplicity. 

CRUDEN.— CONCORDANCE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

By Alexander Cruden, M. A., with a Memoir of the Author by W. Youngman. 
Abridged from the last London Edition, by Wm. Patton, D. D. Portrait. 
One volume, 32mo., sheep, 50 cents. 
*^* Contains all the words to be found in the large work relating to the New Testament. 

DE FOE.— PICTORIAL ROBINSON CRUSOE. 

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. By Daniel De Foe. With a 
Memoir of the Author, and an Essay on his Writings, with upwards of 300 
spirited Engravings, by the celebrated French artist, Grandville. One 
elegant volume, octavo, of 500 pages. $1 75. 

Crusoe has obtained a ready passport to the mansions of the rich, and the cottages of the poor, 
and communicated equal delight to all ranks and classes of the community. Few works have 
been more generally read, or more justly admired ; few that have yielded such incessant amuse- 
ment, and, at the same time, have developed so many lessons of practical instruction. — Sir Walter 
Scott. 

The Messrs. Appleton & Co., of New York, have just published a beautiful edition of "The 
Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe." Not the miserable abridgment generally circulated, 
but De Foe's genuine work, Robinson Crusoe in full and at length, a story which never palls upon 
the reader, and never can lose its popularity while the English language endures. — Pennsyh 



D'ISRAELI.-CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE, 

And the Literary Character illustrated, by L D'Israeli, Esq., D. C. L., F. S. A. 
First and Second Series. The Literary Character, illustrated by the Histo- 
ry of Men of Genius, drawn from their own feelings and confessions, by I. 
D'Israeli, Esq. Curiosities of American Literature, compiled, edited, and 
arranged by Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. The three works in one volume, 
large 8vo. ' Price f 3 50. 

This is the double title of a large and beautifully printed octavo volume, which has just made 
its appearance in the World of Letters. With the tirst part every body is already familiar. The 
deep research, the evident enthusiasm in his subject, and the light and pungent humor displayed 
by D'Israeli in it, are the delight of all classes of readers, and will undoubtedly send him down a 
cheerful journey to posterity, if only on account of the pleasant company in which he has managed 
so agreeably to introduce himself. The other portion of this work — that relating to the Curiosi- 
ties of American Literature — is entirely new to the public; yet we shall be disappointed if it is 
not directly as popular as the other. Mr. Griswold has performed his task in a manner highly 
creditable to his taste, while displaying most favorably his industry, tact, and perseverance. — J\rew 
Yurk Tribune. 

DE LEUZE.-PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION IN ANIMAL 

Magnetism, by J. P. F. De Leuze, translated by Thomas C. Hartshorn. Re- 
vised edition, with an Appendix of Notes by the Translator, and Letters 
from *.minent Physicians and others, descriptive of cases in the U. States. 
One volume, 12mo. $i 00. 

The translator of this work has certainly presented the piofession with an uncommonly well 
digested treatise, enhanced in value by his own notes and the corroborative testimony of eminant 
physicians. — Boston Med 4' Surg. Journal. 

7 



Appleton^s Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 
ELLIS— THE DAUGHTERS OF ENGLAND; 

Their position in Society, Character, and Responsibilities. By Mrs. Ellis. 
In one handsome volume, 12mo., cloth gilt. 50 cents. 

ELLIS— THE WOMEN OF ENGLAND; 

Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits. By Mrs. Ellis. One handsome 
volume, 12mo., cloth gilt. 50 cents. 

ELLIS— THE WIVES OF ENGLAND ; 

Their Relative Duties, Domestic Influences, and Social Obligations. By Mrs. 
Ellis. One handsome volume, 12mo., cloth gilt. 50 cents. 

ELLIS— THE MOTHERS OF ENGLAND; 

Their Influence and Responsibility. By Mrs. Ellis. One handsome volume, 
12mo., cloth gilt. 50 cents. 
This is an appropriate and very valuable conclusion to the series of works on the subject of 
female duties, by which Mrs. Ellis has pleased, and we doubt not profited, thousands of readers. 
Her counsels demand attention, not only by their practical, sagacious usefulness, but also by the 
meek and modest spirit in which they are communicated. — Watchman. 

ELLIS.-THE MINISTER'S FAMILY; 

Or Hints to those who would make Home happy. By Mrs. Ellis. One vol- 
ume, 18mo. 37 1-2 cents. 

ELLIS— FIRST IMPRESSIONS; 

Or Hints to those who would make Home happy. By Mrs. Ellis. One vol 
ume, ]8mo. 37 1-2 cents. 

ELLIS-DANGERS OF DINING OUT; 

Or Hints to those who would make Home happy. By Mrs. Ellis. One vol 
ume, 18mo. 37 1-2 cents. 

ELLIS— SOMERVILLE HALL; 

Or Hints to those who would make Home hnppy. By Mrs. Ellis. One vol- 
ume, ISmo. 37 1-2 cents. 
The above four volumes form a portion of series of" Tales for the People and their Children." 

" To wish prosperity to such books as these, is to desire the moral and physical welfare of the 
human species." — Bath Chronicle. 

EVANS— EVENINGS WITH THE CHRONICLERS; 

Or Uncle Rupert's Tales of Chivalry. By R. M. Evans. With seventeen 
illustrations. One volume, 16mo., elegantly bound, 75 cents. 

This would have been a volume after our own hearts, while we were younjrer, and it is 
scarcely less so now when we are somewhat older. It discourses of those things which charmed 
all of us in early youth — the daring deeds of the JCnights and Squires of feudal warfare — the true 
version of the " Chevy Chase," — the exploits oif the stout and stalwart Warriors of England, 
Scotland, and Germany. In a word, it is an attractive book, and rendered more so to young read- 
ers by a series of wood engravings, beautifully executed. — Courier 4' Enquirer. 

EVANS— THE HISTORY OF JOAN OF ARC. 

By R. M. Evans, author of " Evenings with the Chroniclers," with twenty- 
four elegant illustrations. One volume, 16mo. Extra gilt. 75 cents. 
In the work before us, we have not only a most interesting biography of this female prodigy, 
including what she was and what she accomplished, but also a faithful account of the relations 
that existed between England and France, and of the singular state of things that marked the 
period when this wonderful personage appeared upon the stage. The leading incidents of her 
life are related with exquisite simplicity and touching pathos ; and you cannot repress your admi- 
ration for her heroic qualities, or scarcely repress your tears in view of her ignominious end. To 
the youthful reader we heartily recommend this volume. — Albany Advertiser. 

8 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. ' 

EVANS -THE RECTORY OF VALEHEAD ; 

Or, the Records of a Holy Home. By the Rev. R. W. Evans. From the 
twelfth English edition. One volume, 16mo. 75 cents. 
Universally and cordially do wo recommend this delightful volume We believe no person 
could read this work, and not be the better for its pious and touching lessons. It is a page taken 
from the book of life, and eloquent with all the instruction of an excellent pattern ; it is a com- 
mentary on the affectionate warning, " Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth." We 
have not for some time seen a work we could so deservedly praise, or so conscientiously recom- 
mend — Literary Qazette, 

EMBURY— NATURE'S GEMS; OR, AMERICAN FLOWERS 

In their Native Haunts. By Emma C. Embury. With twenty plates of Plants 
carefully colored after Nature, and landscape views of their localities, 
from drawings taken on the spot, by E. W. Whitefield. One imperial oc- 
tavo volume, printed on the finest paper, and elegantly bound. 
This beautiful work will undoubtedly form a "Gift-Book" for all seasons of the year. It is 
illustrated with twenty colored engravings of indigenous flowers, taken from drawings made on 
the spot where they were found ; while each flower is accompanied by a view of some striking 
feature of American scenery. The literary plan of the book difters entirely from that of any other 
work on a similar subject which has yet appeared. Each plate has its botanical and local de- 
scription, though the chief part of the volume is composed of original tales and poetry, illustrative 
of the sentiments of the flowers, or associated with the landscape. No pains or expense has been 
spared in the mechanical execution of the volume, and the fact that it is purely American both 
in its graphic and literary departments, should recommend it to general notice. 

EWBANK— HYDRAULICS AND MECHANICS. 

A Descriptive and Historical Account of Hydraulic and other Machines for 

raising Water, including the Steam and Fire Engines, ancient and modern ; 

with Observations on various subjects connected with the Mechanic Arts ; 

including the Progressive Development of the Steam Engine. In five 

books. Illustrated by nearly three hundred Engravings. By Thomas 

Ewbank. One handsome volume of six hundred pages. $3 50. 

This is a highly valuable production, replete with novelty and interest, and adapted to gratify 

equally the historian, the philosopher, and the mechanician,' being the result of a protracted and 

extensive research among the arcana of historical and scieniific literature. — J^at. Intelligencer. 

FABER— THE PRIMITIVE DOCTRINE OF ELECTION; 

Or, an Historical Inquiry into the Ideality and Causation of Scriptural Elec- 
tion, as received and maintained in the primitive Church of Christ. By 
George Stanley Faber, B. D., author of "Difficulties of Romanism," 
"Difficulties of Infidelity," Sec. Complete in one volume, octavo. $1 75. 

Mr. Faber verifies his opinion by demonstration. We cannot pay a higher respect to his work 
than by recommending it to all. — Church of England Quarterly Review. 

FALKNER— THE FARMER'S MANUAL. 

A Practical Treatise on the Nature and Value of Manures, founded from 
Experiments on various Crops, with a brief Account of the most Recent 
Discoveries in Agricultural Chemistry. By F. Falkner and the Author of 
"British Husbandry." 12mo., paper cover 31 cents, cloth 50 cents. 
It is the object of the present treatise to explain the nature and constitution of manures gene- 
rally — to point out the means of augmenting the quantity and preserving the fertilizing power of 
farm-yard manure, the various sources of mineral and other artificial manures, and the cause of 
their frequent failuies. — .Author's Preface. 

FARMER'S TREASURE, THE; 

Containing " Falkner's Farmer's Manual," and " Smith's Productive Farm- 
ing," bound together. 12mo., 75 cents. 

FOSTER— ESSAYS ON CHRISTIAN MORALS, 

Experimental and Practical. Originally delivered as Lectures at Broadmead 
Chapel, Bristol. By John Foster, author of " Essays on Decision of Char- 
acter," etc. One volume, 18mo., 50 cents. 

This volume contains twenty-six Essays, some of which are of the highest order of sublimity 
and excellence. 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

FOSTER— BIOG., LIT., AND PHIL. ESSAYS, 

Contributed to the Eclectic Review, by John Foster, author of" Essays on De- 
cision of Human Character," etc. One volume, 12mo., ^1 25. 
These contributions well deserve to class with those of Macauley, Jeffrey, and Sidney Smith, 
in the Edinburgh Review. They contain the productions of a more original and profound thinker 
than either, whose master-mind has exerted a stronger influence upon his readers, and has left a 
deeper impression upon our literature ; and whose peculiar merit it was to present the doctrines 
and moralities of the Christian faith, under a form and aspect which redeemed the familiar frona 
triteness, and threw a charm and freshness about the severest truths. — London Patriot. 

FROST.— THE BOOK OF THE NAVY: 

Comprising a General History of the American Marine, and particular accounts 
of all the most celebrated Naval Battles, from the Declaration of Independ- 
ence to the present time, compiled from the best authorities. By John 
Frost, LL. D. With an Appendix, containing Naval Songs, Anecdotes, 
&c. Embellished with numerous original Engravings, and Portraits of 
distinguished Naval Commanders. One volume, 12mo., $1 00. 
This is the only popular and yet authentic single view which we have of the naval exploits of 

our country, arranged with good taste and set forth in good language. — U. S. Oazette. 

This volume is dedicated to the Secretary of the Navy, and is altogether a very faithful and 

attractive historical record. It deserves, and will doubtless have, a very extended circulation 

— JSTat. Intelligencer. 

FROST.-THE BOOK OF THE ARMY: 

Comprising a General Military History of the United States, from the period 
of the Revolution to the present time, with particular accounts of all the 
most celebrated Battles, compiled from the best authorities. By John 
Frost, LL. D. Illustrated with numerous Engravings, and portraits ot 
distinguished Commanders. One volume, 12mo., $1 00. 
This work gives a complete history of military operations, and their causes and effects, from 
the opening of the Revolution to the close of the last war, with graphic descriptions of the cele- 
brated battles and characters of the leading generals. It is illustrated with numerous portraits on 
Bteel, and views of battles, from original drawings by Darley and others. The importance of pop- 
ular works of the class to which this and the "Book of the Navy" belong, must be obvious to all 
who recognize the value of national recollections in preserving a true national spirit. 

FRESENIUS.-CHEMICAL ANALYSIS. 

Elementary Instruction in Chemical Analysis. By Dr. C. Rhemigius Frese- 
nius. With a Preface by Prof Liebig. Edited by I. Lloyd Bullock. One 
neat volume, 12mo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1 00. 
This Introduction to Practical Chemistry is admitted to bo the most valuable Elementary In- 

gtractor in Chemical Analysis fo- scientific operatives, and for pharmaceutical chemists, which has 

ever been presented to the public. 

GUIZOT.— THE YOUNG STUDENT; 

Or, Ralph and Victor. By Madame Guizot. From the French, by Samuel 
Jackson. One volume of 500 pages, with illustrations. Price 75 cents, or 
in three volumes, $1 12. 

This volume of biographical incidents is a striking picture of juvenile life. To all that num- 
berless class of youth who are passing through their literary education, whether in boarding- 
schools or academies, in the collegiate course, or the preparatory studies connected with them, we 
know nothing more piecisely fitted to meliorate their character, and direct their course, subordi- 
nate to the higher authority of Christian ethics, than this excellent delineation of " The Young 
Student," by Madame Guizot. * * * The French Academy were correct in their judgment, 
when they pronounced Madame Guizot's Student the best book of the year.— Courier fy Enquirer. 

GUIZOT.-GENERAL HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION 

In Europe, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution. 
Translated from the French of M. Guizot, Professor of History to la Facul- 
te des Lettres of Paris, and Minister of Public Instruction. Third Ameri- 
can edition, with Notes, by C. S. Henry, D. D. One handsome volume, 
12rao., $1 00. 

M. Guizot in his instructive Lectures has given us an epitomeof modern history, distinguished 
by all the merit which, in another department, renders Blackstone a subject of such peculiar and 
unbounded praise — a work closely condensed, including nothing useless, omitting nothing essen 
tial ; written with grace, and conceived and arranged with consummate ability. — BosL Traveller. 

10 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications, 



GRISWOLD.-CURIOSITIES OF AMER. LITERATURE: 

Compiled, edited, and arranged by Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. See D'Israeli 
GIRL'S MANUAL: 

Comprising a summary View of Female Studies, Accomplishments, and Prin- 
ciples of Conduct. Frontispiece. One volume, 18mo., 50 cents. 

GOLDSMITH— PICTORIAL VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 

The Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. Illustrated with upwards of 
100 engravings on wood, making a beautiful volume, octavo, of 300 pages. 
$1 25. The same, miniature size, 37 1-2 cents. 

We love to turn back over these rich old classics of our own language, and re-juvenate our- 
selves by the never-failing associations which a re-perusal always calls up. Let anyone who has 
not read this immortal t:ile for fifteen or twenty years, try the experiment, and we will warrant 
that be rises up from the task — the pleasure, we sliould have said — a happier and a better man. 
In the good old Vicar of Wakefield, all is pure gold, without dross or alloy of any kind. This 
much we have said to our last generation readers. This edition of the work, however, we take it 
was got up for the benefit of the rising generation, and we really envy our young friends the plea- 
sure which is before such of them as will read it for the first time. — Savannah Republican. 

GOLDSMITH.— ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 

By Oliver Goldsmith. Miniature size, 37 1-2 cents. 

Forming one of the series of '' Miniature Classical Library." 

GRESLEY— PORTRAIT OF A CHURCHMAN, 

By the Rev. W. Gresley, A. M. From the Seventh English edition. One 
elegant volume, 16mo., 75 cents. 
" The main part of this admirable volume is occupied upon the illustration of the practical 
workinnr of Church principles when sincerely received, setting forth their value in the commerce of 
daily liie, and how surely they conduct those who embrace them in the safe and quiet path of holy 
life." 

GRESLEY— A TREATISE ON PREACHING, 

In a Series of Letters by the Rev. W. Gresley, M. A. Revised, with Supple- 
mentary Notes, by the Rev. Benjamin I. Haight, M. A., Rector of All 
Saints' Church, New York. One volume, 12mo. ^1 25. 

Advertisement. — Tn preparing the American edition of Mr. Gresley's valuable Treatise, a few 
foot-notes have been added by the Editor, which are distinguished by brackets. The more extend- 
ed notes at the end have been selected from the best works on the subject — and which, v/ith one 
or two exceptions, are not easily accessible to the American student. 

HAMILTON— THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 

Edited by his son, John C. Hamilton. Two volumes, 8vo., $5 00. 

We cordially recommend the perusal and diligent study of these volumes, exhibiting, aa they 
do, much valuable matter relative to tbe Revolution, the establishment of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, and other important events in the annals of our country. — JV. Y. Review. 

HEMANS— THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

Of Felicia Hemans, printed from the last English edition, edited by her Sister. 

Illustrated with 6 steel Engravings. One beautifully printed and portable 

volume, 16mo., ^ , or in two volumes, $ 

Of this highly accomplished poetess it has been truly said, that of all her sex " few have writ- 
ten so much and so well." Although her writings possess an energy equal to their high-toned 
beauty, yet are they so pure and so refined, that not a line of them could feeling spare or delicacy 
blot fiom her pages. Her imagination v.as rich, chaste, and glowing. Her chosen themes are the 
cradle, the hearth-stone, and the death-bed. In her poems of Coeur de Lion, Ferdinand of Ara- 
gon, and Bernard del Carpio, we see beneath the glowing colors with which she clothes her ideas, 
the feelings of a woman's heart. Her earlier poems. Records of Woman and Forest Sanctuary, 
itand unrivalled. In short, her works will ever be read by a pious and enlightened community. 

HEMANS-SONGS OF THE AFFECTIONS, 

By Felicia Hemans. One volume, 32mo., gilt. 31 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" Miniature Classical Library." 

HARE— SERMONS TO A COUNTRY CONGREGATION, 

By Augustus William Hare, A. M., late Fellow of New College, and Rector of 
Alton Barnes. One volume, royal 8vo,, $3 85, 



Applcton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

HALL— THE PRINCIPLES OF DIAGNOSIS, 

By Marshall Hall, M. D., F. R. S., &c. Second edition, with many improve- 
ments. By Dr. John A. Sweet. One volume, 8vo., ^2 00. 

This work was published in accordance with the desire of some of the most celebrated physi- 
cians of this country, who were anxious that it should be brought witliin the reach of all classes 
of medical men, to whose attention it offers strong claims as the best work on the subject. 

HAZEN— SYMBOLICAL SPELLING-BOOK. 

The Symbolical Spelling-Book, in two parts. By Edward Hazen. Contain- 
ing 288 engravings. 18 3-4 cents. 

This work is used in upwards of one thousand different schools, and pronounced to be one of 
the best works published. 

HODGE— THE STEAM-ENGINE: 

Its Origin and gradual Improvement, from the time of Hero to the present day, 
as adapted to Manufactures, Locomotion, and Navigation. Illustrated with 
48 Plates in full detail, numerous wood cuts, &c. By Paul R. Hodge, 
C. £. One volume folio of plates, and letter-press in 8vo. $10 00. 
This work should be placed in the " Captain's Office " of every steamer in our country, and 
also with every engineer to whom is confided the control of the engine. From it they would de- 
rive all the information which would enable them to comprehend the cau^.* and effects of every 
ordinary accident, and also the method promptly and successfully to repair any injury, and to rem- 
edy any defect. 

HOLYDAY TALES: 

Consisting of pleasing Moral Stories for the Young. One volume, square 
16mo., with numerous illustrations. 37 1-2 cents. 

This is a most capital little book. The stories are evidently written by an able hand and that 
too in an exceedingly Kttractive style. — Spectator. 

HOOKER— THE COMPLETE WORKS 

Of that learned and judicious divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, with an account of 
his Life and Death. By Isaac Walton. Arranged by the Rev. John Keble, 
M. A. First American from the last Oxford edition. With a complete 
general Index, and Index of the texts of Scripture, prepared expressly for 
this edition. Two elegant volumes, 8vo., $4 00. 

Contents. — The Editor's Preface comprises a general survey of the former edition of Hooker's 
Works, with Historical Illustrations of the period. Afler which follows the Life of Hooker, by 
Isaac Walton. His chief work succeeds, on the " Laws of Ecclesiasticul Polity." 

It commences with a lengthened Preface designed as an address "to them who seek the refor- 
mation of the Laws and Orders Ecclesiastical of the Church of England." The discussion is divi- 
dedintoeight books, which include an investigation of the topics. After those eight books of the 
"Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity," follow two Sermons, "The certainty and perpetuity of Faith in 
the elect; especially of the Prophet Habakkuk's faith ;" and " Justification, Works, and how the 
foundation of faith is overthrown." Next are introduced " A supplication made to the Council 
by Master Walter Travers," and " Mr. Hooker's answer to the supplication that Mr Travcrs 
made to the Council." Then follow two Sermons — " On the nature of Pride," and a " Remedy 
against Sorrow and Fear." Two Sermons on part of the epistle of the Apostle Jude are next in- 
serted, with a prefatory dedication by Henry Jackson. The last article in the works of Mr. Hooker 
is a Sermon on Prayer. 

The English edition in three volumes sells at $10 00. The American is an exact reprint, at 
less than half the price. 

HUDSON— THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY HUDSON, 

By the author of " Uncle Philip's Conversations." Frontispiece. 18mo., 

cloth. 37 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" A Library for my Young Countrymen." 

This little volume furnishcu us, from authentic sources, the most important facts in this cele- 
brated adventurer's life, and in a style that possesses more than ordinary interest. — Eveninv Post. 

HOWITT-THE CHILD'S PICTURE AND VERSE-BOOK; 

Commonly called "Otto Speckter's Fable-Book." Translated from the Ger- 
man by Mary Howitt. Illustrated with 100 engravings on w^ood. Square 
12mo., in ornamental binding, $ 

A celebrated German review says, " Of this production, which makes itself an epoch in the 
world of children, it is superfluous to speak. The Fable-Book is throughout all Germany in the 
hands of parents and children, and will alwavs be new, because every year fresh children are born " 

12 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 



HOWITT— LOVE AND MONEY; 

An Every-Day Tale, by Mary Hovvitt. 18mo., two Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

LITTLE COJN, MUCH CARE ; 

Or, How Poor People Live. By Mary Hovvitt. ISmo., two Plates, 38 cents. 

SOWING AND REAPING; 

Or, What will Come of It. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two Plates, 38 cents. 

ALICE FRANKLIN; 

A Sequel to Sowing and Reaping — a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo. two 

Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

WORK AND WAGES; 

Or, Life in Service— a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two Plates, cloth 
gilt, 38 cents. 



STRIVE AND THRIVE; 



A Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

WHO SHALL BE GREATEST; 

A Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

WHICH IS THE WISER; 

Or, People Abroad— a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two Plates, 38 cents. 

HOPE ON, HOPE EVER; 

Or, The Boyhood of Felix Law— a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two 
Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 



NO SENSE LIKE COMMON SENSE; 



A Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18nio., two Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

♦^* The above ten volumes form a portion of the series published under the general title of 
'Tales for the People and their Children." 

Of late years many writers have exerted their talent<3 in juvenile literature, with great success. 
Miss Martineau has made political economy as familiar to boys as it formerly was to statesmen. 
Our own Miss Sedgwick has produced some of the most beautiful moral stories, for the edification 
and delight of children, which have ever been written. The Hon. Horace Mann, in addresses to 
adults, has presented the claims of children for good education, with a power and eloquence of 
style, and an elevation of thought, which shows his heart is in his work. The stories of Mary 
Howitt. Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Copley, and Mrs. Ellis, which form a part of" Tales for the Peo- 
ple and their Children," will be found valuable additions to juvenile literature ; at the same time 
they may be read with profit by parents for the good lessons they inculcate, and by all other read- 
ers for the literary excellence they display 

We wish they could be placed in the hands and engraven on the minds of all the youth in the 
country. They manifest a nice and accurate observation of human nature, and especially the na- 
ture of children, a fine sympathy with every thing good and pure, and a capability of infusing it in 
the minds of others — great beauty and simplicity of style, and a keen eye to practical life, with all 
its faults, united with a deep love for ideal excellence. 

Messrs Appleton & Co deserve the highest praise for the excellent manner in which they 
have ''got up" their juvenile library, and we sincerely hope that its success will be so great as to 
induce them to make continual contributions to its treasures. The collection is one which should 
be owned by every parent wlio wishes that the moral and intellectual improvement of his children 
should keep pace with their growth in years, and the development of their physical powers. — 
.American Traveller 

JERRAM.— THE CHILD'S OWN STORY-BOOK; 

Or, Tales and Dialogues for the Nursery. By Mrs. Jerram (late Jane Eliza- 
beth Holmes). Illustrated with numerous Engravings. 50 cents. 

There are seventy stories in this volume. They are admirably adapted for the countloss 
youth for whose edification they are narrated — Boston Oaiette. 

JOHNSON— THE HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 

Prince of Abyssinia — a Tale. By Samuel Johnson, LL. D. 32mo., gilt 
leaves, 38 cents. 

*** Forming one of the series of" Miniature Claesical Library.*' 

13 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

JAMES.-THE TRUE CHRISTIAN, 

Exemplified in a Series of Addresses, by Rev. John Angell James. One vol. 
18mo, 38 cents. 
These addresses are amongst the choicest effusions of the admirable author. — Chr. Intell. 

THE ANXIOUS INQUIRER 

A-fter Salvation Directed and Encouraged. By Rev. John Angell James. 
One volume, IBmo., 38 cents. 
Upwards of twenty thousand copies of this excellent little volume have been sold, which fully 
attests the liigh estimation the work has attained with the religious community. 

HAPPINESS, ITS NATURE AND SOURCES. 

By Rev. John Angell James. One volume, 32mo., 25 cents. 

This is written in the excellent author's best vein. A better book wc have not in a long time 
seen. — Evana-dist. 



THE CHRISTIAN PROFESSOR 



Addressed in a Series of Counsels and Cautions to the Members of Christian 
Churches. By Rev. John Angell James. Second edition. One volume, 
18mo., 63 cents. 
A most excellent work from the able and prolific pen of Mr. James.— CAr. Intelligencer. 

THE YOUNG MAN FROM HOME. 

In a Series of Letters, especially directed for the Moral Advancement of 
Youth. By Rev. John Angell James. Fifth edition. One volume, 
18mo., 38 cents. 
The work is a rich treasury of Christian counsel and instruction. — Albany Advertiser. 

THE WIDOW DIRECTED 

To the Widow's God. By Rev. John Angell James. One volume, 18mo., 
38 cents. 

The book is worthy to be read by others besides the class for which it is especially designed ; 
nnd we doubt not that it is destined to come as a friendly visitor to many a house of mourning, 
and as a healing balm to many a wounded heart. — JV. Y. Observer 

KEIGHTLEY.— THE MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE 

And Italy, designed for the use of Schools. By Thomas Keightley. Nume- 
rous wood-cut illustrations. One volume, l8mo., half bound, 44 cents. 

This is a neat little volume, and well adapted to the purpose for which it wa.' prepared. It 
presents, in a very compendious and convenient form, every thing relating to the subject, of impor- 
tance to the young student. — L. I. Star. 

KINGSLEY.— THE SACRED CHOIR: 

A Collection of Church Music, consisting of Selections from the most distin- 
guished Authors, among whom are the names of Haydn, Mozart, Beetho- 
ven, Pergolessi, &c. &.C., with several pieces of Music by the Author; also 
a Progressive Elementary System of Instruction for Pupils. By George 
Kingsley, author of the Social Choir, &c. &c. Fourth edition. 75 cents. 

Mr. George Kingsley : Sir, — We have examinedthe " Sacred Choir" enough to lead us to ap- 
preciate the work as the best publication of Sacred Music extant. Tt is beautifully printed and 
substantially bound conferring credit on the publishers. We bespeak for the " Sacred Ciioir " an 
extensive circulation. O. S. Bowdoin, 

Sinceiely ycurs, E O. Goodwin, 

D. Ingraham. 

KIP.-THE DOUBLE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH, 

By Rev. Wm. Ingraham Kip, author of "Lenten Fast."' One volume, 12mo. 
Second edition. Boards 75 cents, cloth $1 00. 

This is a sound, clear, and able production — a book much wanted for these times, and one that 
we feel persuaded will prove eminently useful. It is a happy delineation of that doudle witness 
which the Church bears against Romanism and ultra-Protestantism, and points out her middle 
path as the only one of truth and safety. — Banner of the Cross. 

14 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

LAFEVER— BEAUTIES OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE; 

Consisting of forty-eight Plates of Original Designs, with Plans, Elevations, 
and Sections, also a Dictionary of Technical Terms ; the whole forming a 
complete Manual for the Practical Builder. By M. Lafever, Architect. 
One volume, large 8vo., half bound, $6 00. 

STAIR-CASE AND HAND-RAIL 

Construction. The Modern Practice of Stair-case and Hand-rail Construction, 
practically explained, in a Series of Designs. By M. Lafever, Architect 
With Plans and Elevations for Ornamental Villas. Fifteen Plates. One 
volume, large 8vo., ^3 00. 

Mr. Lafever's " Beauties of Architecture," and his " Practice of Stair-case and Hand-rail con- 
Btruction," constitute two volumes rich in instruction in those departments of business. They 
are a necessary acquisition not only to the operative workman, but to all landlords and proprietors 
of houses, who would combine both the ornamental and useful in their family dwellings, and also 
understand the most economical and profitable modes by which their edifices can be erected and 
repaired. 

LEWIS-RECORDS OF THE HEART, 

By Sarah Anna Lewis. One volume, 12mo., ^1 00. 

We have read some of the pieces with much pleasure. They indicate poetic genius of no or- 
dinary kind, and are imbued with much feeling and pathos. We welcome the volume as a credit- 
able accession to the poetic literature of the country. — Boston Traveller. 

LIEBIG.-FAMILIAR LETTERS ON CHEMISTRY, 

And its relation to Commerce, Physiology, and Agriculture. By Justus Lie- 
big, M. D. Edited by John Gardner, M. D. One volume. 13 cents 
in paper, 25 cents bound. 

The Letters contained in this little volume embrace some of the most important points of the 
Science of Chemistry, in their application to Natural Philosophy, Physiology, Agriculture, and 
Commerce. 

LETTER-WRITER, 

The Useful Letter- Writer, comprising a succinct Treatise on the Epistolary 
Art, and Forms of Letters for all ordinary Occasions of Life. Compiled 
from the best authorities. Frontispiece. 32mo., gilt leaves, 38 cents. 
Forming one of the series of " Miniature Classical Library." 

LOOKING-GLASS FOR THE MIND; 

Or, Intellectual Mirror. Being an elegant Collection of the most delightful 
little Stories and interesting Tales ; chiefly translated from that much ad- 
mired work, L'ami des Enfans. Illustrated with numerous wood-cuts. 
From the twentieth London edition. One volume, 18mo., 50 cents. 
Forming one of the series of" Tales for the People and their Children." 

LOG CABIN: 

Or, The World before You. By the author of " Three Experiments of Liv- 
ing," " The Huguenots in France and America," etc. One volume, ISmc, 
50 cents. 
Every person who takes up this volume will read it with interest. It is truly what the writer 

intended it should be — " A Guide to Usefulness and Happiness." 

LOVER -HANDY ANDY: 

A Tale of Irish Life, by Samuel Lover. Illustrated with twenty-three char- 
acteristic steel Engravings. One volume, Svo., cloth $1 25, boards $1 00. 
Cheap edition, two Plates, paper, 50 cents. 
This boy Handy will be the death of us. What is the police force about to allow the uttering 

of a publication that has already brought us to the brink of apoplexy fifty times ?— Sport. Review. 



L. S. D.— TREASURE TROVE 



A Tale, by Samuel Lover. One volume, 8vo., with two steel Engravings. 
Paper cover, 25 cents. 

This is a capital thing. The gay and the grave, the " lively and severe," are united with a 
skilful hand, and there is a latent tone of sound morality running through "L. S, D." which will 
give a lasting value to its pages. — Commercial .Advertiser. 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

LUCY AND ARTHUR; 

A Book for Children. Illustrated with numerous engravings, elegantly bound 
in cloth. 50 cents. 
Lucy and Arthur is a charming story of the nurserk, prepared oy an experienced author. Se- 
cure it for the family. — American Traveller. 

LYRA APOSTOLICA. 

From the Fifth English edition. One elegantly printed volume, 75 cents. 

In this elegant volume there are forty-five sections, and one hundred and seventy-nine lyric 
poems, all short, and many of them sweet. — JVeio York American. 

MAGEE— ON ATONEMENT AND SACRIFICE: 

Discourses and Dissertations on the Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and 
Sacrifice, and on the Principal Arguments advanced, and the Mode of 
Reasoning employed, by the Opponents of those Doctrines, as held by the 
Established Church. By the late Most Rev. William M'Gee, D. D., Arch- 
bishop of Dublin. Two volumes, 8vo., $5 00. 
This is one of the ablest critical and polemical works of modern times. The profound biblical 

information on a variety of topics which the Archbishop brings forward, must endear his name to 

all lovers of Christianity. — Orme. 

MANNING -THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH, 

By the Rev. Henry Edward Manning, M. A., Archdeacon of Chichester. One 
volume, 16mo., $1 00. 

Part I. The History and Exposition of the Doctrine of Catholic Unity. Part II. The Moral 
Design of Catholic Unity. Part III. The Doctrine of Catholic Unity applied to the Actual State' 

of Christendom. 

We commend it earnestly to the devout and serious perusal of all Churchmen, and particularly 
of all clergymen, as the ablest discussion we ever met with of a deeply and vitally important sub- 
ject. — Churchman. 

MARRYAT— MASTERMAN READY; 

Or, The Wreck of the Pacific. Written for Young Persons, by Capt. Marry- 
at. Complete in 3 vols., 18mo., with Frontispiece, cloth gilt, $1 25. 
Forming a portion of the series of" Tales for the People and their Children." 

We have never seen any thing from the same pen we like as well as this. It is the modern 
Crusoe, and is entitled to take rank with that charming romance. — Commercial Advertiser. 

MARSHALL-NOTES ON THE EPISCOPAL POLITY 

Of the Holy Catholic Church, with some account of the Developments of Mo 
dern Religious Systems, by Thomas William Marshall, B. A., of the Dio 
cese of Salisbury. Edited by Jonathan M. Wainwright, D. D. With a 
new and complete Index of the Subjects and of the Texts of Scripture 
One volume, i2mo., $1 25. 

I. Introduction. II. Scripture Evidence. III. Evidence of Antiquity. IV. Admission ot 
Adversaries. V. Developmentof Modern Religious Systems. 

A more important work than this has not been issued for a long time. We earnestly recom 
mend it to the attention of every Churchman. — Banner of the Cross. 

MARTINEAU-THE CROFTON BOYS ; 

A Tale for Youth, by Harriet Martineau. One volume, ]8mo., Frontispiece 
Cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of "Tales for the People and their Children." 

It abounds in interest, and is told with the characteristic ability and spirit of the distinguished 
author. — Evening Post. 

THE PEASANT AND THE PRINCE; 

A Tale of the French Revolution, by Harriet Martineau. One volume, 18mo, 
Frontispiece. Cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" Tales for the People and their Children.' 

This is a most inviting little history of Louis the Sixteenth and his family. Here, in a style 
even more familiar than Scott's Talss of a Grandfather, we have a graphic epitome of many facts 
connected with the days of the " Revolution." — Courier 8f Enquirer. 

16 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

MAURICE— THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST; 

Or, Hints respecting the Principles, Constitution, and Ordinances of the Cath- 
olic Church. By Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, M. A. London. One 

volume, 8vo., 600 pages, $2 50. 

On the theory of the Church of Christ, all should consult the work of Mr. Maurice, the most 

philosophical writer of the day. — Pruf. GarbetVs Bampton Lectures, 1842 

MILTON— THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

Ol John Milton, with Explanatory Notes and a Life of the Author, by the Rev. 
Henry Stebbing, A. M. Illustrated with six steel Engravings. One vol- 
ume, 16mo., ^1 25. 

Forming one of the series of "Cahinet Edition of Standard Poets." *:^* The Latin and Italian 
Poems are included in this edition. 
Mr. Stebbing's Notes will be found very useful in elucidating the learned allusions with which 
the text abounds, and they are also valuable for the correct appreciation with which the writer di- 
rects attention to the beauties of the author. 

PARADISE LOST, 

By John Milton. With Notes, by Rev. H. Stebbing. One volume, 18mo., 
cloth 38 cents, gilt leaves 50 cents. 



PARADISE REGAINED, 



By John Milton. With Notes, by Rev. H. Stebbing. One volume, 18mo., 

cloth 25 cents, gilt leaves 38 cents. 
MAXWELL-FORTUNES OF HECTOR O'HALLORAN 

And his man IMark Antony O'Toole, by W. H. Maxwell. One volume, 8vo., 
two plates, paper, 50 cents, twenty-four plates, boards, $1 00, cloth, ^1 25. 
It is one of the best of all the Irish stories, full of s.jJrit, fun, drollery, and wit. — Cour. ^- Enq. 

MOORE -LALLAH ROOKH ; 

An Oriental Romance, by Thomas Moore. One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, 
cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

Forming a portion of the series of" Miniature Classical Library." 
This exquisite Poem has long been the admiration of readers of ail classes. 

MORE— PRACTICAL PIETY, 

By Hannah More. One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, 38 cents. 
Forming one of the series of-' Miniature Classical Library." 
"Practical Piety" has always bee deemed the most attractive and eloquent of all Hannah 
More's works. 

PRIVATE DEVOTION! 

A Series of Prayers and Meditations, with an Introductory Essay on Prayer, 
chiefly from the writings of Hannah More. From the twenty-fifth London 
edition. One volume, 32mo., Frontispiece, cloth gilt, 31 cents. 
Forming one of the series of" Miniature Classical Library." 
m Upwards of fifty thousand copies of this admirable manual have been sold in the U. States. 

DOMESTIC TALES 

And Allegories, illustrating Human Life. By Hannah More. One volume, 
18mo., 38 cents. 

Contents. — I. Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. II, Mr. Fantom the Philosopher. III. Two 
Shoemakers. IV. Giles the Poacher. V. Servant turned Soldier. VI. General Jail Delivery. 

RURAL TALES, 

By Hannah More. One volume, 18mo., 38 cents. 

Contents.— I. Parley the Porter. II. All for the Best. III. Two Wealth" Farmers. IV 
Tom White. V. Pilgrims. VL Valley of Teais. 

Forming a portion of the series of "Tales for the People and their Children." 

These two volumes comprise that portion of Hannah More's Repository Tales which are 
adapted to general usefulness in this country. 

17 



Appletoji's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

NAPOLEON— PICTORIAL HISTORY 

Of Napoleon Bonaparte, translated from the French of M. Laurent de L'Ar 
deche, with Five Hundred spirited Illustrations, after designs by Horace 
Vernet, and twenty Original Portraits engraved in the best style. Com- 
plete in two handsome volumes, 8vo., about 500 pages each, $3 50 ; cheap 
edition, paper cover, four parts, $2 00. 

The work is superior to the long, verbose productions of Scott and Bourienne — not in style 
alone, but in trutli— being written to please neither Charles X. nor the English aristocracy, but for 
the cause of Ireedom. It lias advaniayi.s over every other memoir extant. — American Traveller. 

NEWMAN— PAROCHIAL SERMONS, 

By John Henry Newman, B. D. Six volumes of the English edition in two 

volumes, 8vo., $5 00. 
SERMONS BEARING ON SUBJECTS 

Of the Day, by John Henry Newman, B. D. One volume, 12mo., $1 25. 

As a compendium of Christian duty, these Sermons will be read by people of all denomina- 
tions ; iis models of style, they will be valued by writers inevery department of literature.— t/nifed 

Slates Oaiette. 

OGILBY— ON LAY-BAPTISM: 

An Outline of the Argument against the Validity of Lay-Baptism. By John 
D. Ogilby, D. D., Professor of Eccles. History. One vol., 12mo., 75 cents. 

From a cursory inspection of it, we take it to be a thorough, fearless, and able discussion of the 
subject which it proposes— aiming less to excite inquiry, than to satisfy by learned and ingenious 
argument inquiries already excited. — Churchman. 

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ENGLAND 

And America. Three Lectures — L The Church in England and America 
Apostolic and Catholic. H. The Causes of the English Reformation. HI. 
Its Character and Results. By John D. Ogilby, D. D. One vol., 16mo., 

75 cents. 

" I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church." JVtcene Creed 
Prof, Ogilby has furnished the Church, in this little volume, with a most valuable aid. We 
think it is d.esigned to become a text-book oa the subject of which it treats. — True Catholic. 

OLD OAK TREE: 

Illustrated with numerous wood-cuts. One volume, 18mo., 38 cents. 

The precepts conveyed are altogrther unexceptionable, and the volume is well calculated to 
prove attractive with children. — Saturday Chronicle. 

OLMSTED— INCIDENTS OF A WHALING VOYAGE: 

To which is added, Observations on the Scenery, Manners, and Customs, and 
Missionary Stations of the Sandwicli and Society Islands, accompanied by 
numerous Plates. By Francis Allyn Olmsted. One vol., 12mo., $1 50. 
The work embodies a mass of intelligence interesting to the ordinary reader as well as to the 

philosophical inquirer. — Courier Sf Enquirer. 

PAGET.-TALES OF THE VILLAGE, 

By the Rev. Francis E. Paget, M. A. Three elegant volumes, ISmo., $1 75. ^ 
The first series, or volume, presents a popular view of the contrast in opinions and modes of 
thought between Churchmen and Romanists ; the second sets forth Church principles, as opposed 
to what, in England, is termed Dissent; and the tliird places in contrast the chaiacter of the 
Churchman and the Infidel. At any time these volumes would be valuable, especially to the 
young. At present, when men's minds are much turned to such subjects, they cannot fail of being 
eagerly sought for. — JVew-York American. 

PALMER— A TREATISE ON THE CHURCH 

Of Christ. Designed chiefly for the use of Students in Theology. By the 
Rev. William Palmer, M. A., of Worcester College, Oxford. Edited, with 
Notes, by the Right Rev. W. R. Whittingham, D. D., Bishop of the Prot. 
Epis. Church in the Diocese of Maryland. Two volumes, 8vo., $5 00. 
The chief design of this work is to supply some answer to the assertion so frequently made, 
that individuals are not bound to submit to any ecclesiastical authority whatever : or that, if they 
are, they must, in consistency, accept Romanism with all its claims and errors. — Preface, 

18 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

PARNELL— APPLIED CHEMISTRY, 

In Manufactures, Arts, and Domestic Economy. Edited by E. A. Parnell. 
Illustrated with numerous wood Engravings, and specimens of Dyed and 
Printed Cottons. Paper cover 75 cents, cloth $1 00. 

The Editor's aim is to divest the work, as far as practicable, of all technical terms, so as to 
adaj)t it to the requirements of the general reader. 

The above forms the first division of the work. It is the author's intention to continue it from 
time to time, so as to form a complete Practical Encyclopaedia of Chemistry applied to the Arts. 
The subjects to immediately follow will be, Manufacture of Glass, Indigo, Sulphuric Acid, Zinc, 
Potash, Coffee, Tea, Chocolate, &c. 

PEARSON— AN EXPOSITION OF THE CREED, 

By John Pearson, D. D., late Bishop of Chester. With an Appendix, contain- 
ing the principal Greek and Latin Creeds. Revised and corrected by the 
Rev. W. S. Dobson, M. A., Peterhouse, Cambridge. One vol., 8vo., ^2 00. 

The following may he stated as the advantages of this edition over all others : 
First — Great care has been taken to correct the numerous errors in the references to the texts 
of Scripture, which had crept in by reason of the repeated editions through which this admirable 
work has passed; and many references, as will be seen on turning to the Index of Texts, have 
been added. 

Secondly — The Quotations in the Notes have been almost universally identified and the refer- 
ence to them adjoined. 

Lastly — The principal Symbola or Creeds, of which the particular Articles have been cited by 
the Autlior, have been annexed ; and wherevei the original writers have given the Symbola in a 
scattered and disjointed manner, the detached parts have been brought into a successive and con- 
nected point of view. These have been added in Chronological order, in the form of an Appen- 
dix.— Ta/e Editor 

PHILIP— THE LIFE AND OPINIONS 

Of Dr. Milne, Missionary to China. Illustrated by Biographical Annals of 
Asiatic Missions, from Primitive Protestant Times : intended as a Guide 
to Missionary Spirit. By Rev. Robert Philip. One vol., 12mo., 50 cents. 

The work is executed with great skill, and embodies a vast amount of valuable missionary 
inte ligence, besides a rich variety of personal incidents, adapted to gratify notonly the missionary 
or the Christian, but the more general reader. — Observer. 

YOUNG MAN'S CLOSET LIBRARY, 

By Robert Philip. With an Introductory Essay, by Rev. Albert Barnes. One 
volume, 12mo., $1 00. 

LOVE OF THE SPIRIT, 

Traced in His Work : a Companion to the Experimental Guides. By Robert 
Philip. One volume, 18mo., 50 cents. 

DEVOTIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL 

Guides. By Robert Philip. With an Introductory Essay by Rev. Albert 
Barnes. Two volumes, 12mo., $1 75. Containing Guide to the Per- 
plexed, Guide to the Devotional, Guide to the Thoughtful, Guide to the 
Doubting, Guide to the Conscientious, Guide to Redemption. 

LADY'S CLOSET LIBRARY: 

The Marys, ^ r Beauty of Female Holiness ; The ]Marthas, or Varieties of Fe- 
male Piet} ; The Lydias, or Development of Female Character. By Rob- 
ert Philip. Each volume, 18mo., 50 cents 

The MATERNAL series of the above popular Library is now ready, entitled 
The Hannahs ; or, Maternal Influence of Sons. By Robert Philip. One 
volume, 18mo., 50 cents. 
The author of this excellent work is known to the public as one of the most prolific writers of 
the day, and scarcely any writer in the department which he occupies has acquired so extensive 
and well-merited a populnTity.— Evangelist. 

POLLOK.— THE COURSE OF TIME, 

By Robert Pollok. With a Life of the Author, and complete Analytical In- 
dex, prepared expressly for this edition. 32mo., frontispiece, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of " Miniature Classical Library." 
Few modern Poems exist which at once attained such acceptance and celebrity as this. 

19 



Appletoii's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

PRATT.-DAWNINGS OF GENIUS; 

Or, the Early Lives of some Eminent Persons of the last Century. By Anne 
Pratt. One volume, 18mo., frontispiece, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" A Library for my Young Countrymen." 
Contents. — Sir Humphrey Davy — Rev. George Crabhe — Baron Cuvier — Sir Joshua Reyrolrla 
— Lindley Murray — Sir James Mackintosh — Dr. Adam Clarke. 

PRIZE STORY-BOOK: 

Consisting chiefly of Tales, translated from the German, French, and Italian, 
together witli Select Tales from the English. Illustrated with numerous 
Engravings from new designs. One thick volume, 16mo., cloth gilt. 

PURE GOLD FROM THE RIVERS OF WISDOM: 

A Collection of Short Extracts from the most Eminent Writers — Bishop Hall, 
Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, Hooker, Bacon, Leighton, Addison, Wilberforce, 
Johnson, Young, Southey, Lady Montague, Hannah More, etc. One 
volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth gilt, 31 cents. 

Forming one of the series of " Miniature Classical Library." 

PUSS IN BOOTS: 

A pure Translation in Prose, from the original German. Illustrated with I'i 
original Designs, suitable for the Tastes of the Young or Old, by the cele- 
brated artist, Otto Speckter. One vol., square 12mo., cloth gilt. 

SAINT PIERRE.-PAUL AND VIRGINIA: 

A Tale, by J. B. H. De Saint Pierre. One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth 
gilt, 31 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" Miniature Classical Library." 

SANDHAM— THE TWIN SISTERS: 

A Tale for Youth, by Mrs. Sandham. From the twentieth London edition. 
One volume, 18mo., frontispiece, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

Forming a portion of the series of "Tales for the People and their Children." 
The moral is excellent throughout. Its merit renders it a pleasunt book for even grown-up 
children. — Boston Post. 

SCOTT— THE POETICAL WORKS 

Of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Containing Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, 
Lady of the Lake, Don Roderick, Rokeby, Ballads, Lyrics, and Songs, 
with a Life of the Author. Illustrated with six steel Engravings. One 
volume, l6mo., ^1 25. 

LADY OF THE LAKE: 

A Poem, by Sir Walter Scott. One volume, ISmo., frontispiece, cloth 25 
cents, gilt edges 38 cents. 

marmion: 

A Tale of Flodden Field, by Sir Walter Scott. One volume, 18mo., frontis- 
piece, cloth 25 cents, gilt edges 38^ents. 
LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL: 

A Poem, by Sir Walter Scott. One volume, 18mo., frontispiece, cloth 25 
cents, gilt edges 38 cents. 
Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present day, and de^servedly so. lie 
describes that which is most easily and generally understood with more vivacity and eifect tlian 
any other writer. His style is clear, flowing, and transparent; his sentiments, of which his style 
is an easy and natural medium, are common to him with his readers. — Hazlitt. 

SPINCKES— MANUAL OF PRIVATE DEVOTIONS: 

(Complete,) collected from the writings of Archbishop Laud, Bishop Andrews, 
Bishop Ken, Dr. Hickes, Mr. Kettlewell, Mr. Spinckes, and other eminent 
old English divines. With a Preface by the Rev. Mr. Spinckes. Edited 
by Francis E. Paget, M. A. One elegant volume, 16mo., $1 00. 
As a manual of private devotions, it will be found most valuable. — JVewj- York American. 

20 



Appletoji's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 



SPENCER— THE CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTED 

In the Ways of the Gospel and the Church, in a series of Discourses delivered 
at St. James's Church, Goshen, New- York. By the Rev. J. A. Spencer, 
M. A., late Rector. One volume, 16mo., $1 25. 
This is a very useful volume of Sermons : respectable in style, sound in doctrine, and affec- 
tionate in tone, tliey are well adapted for reading in the family circle, or placing on the family 
book-shelf. * * * We think it a work of which the circulation is likely to promote true reli- 
gion and genuine piety. It is enriched with a body of excellent notes selected from the writings 
of the dead and living ornaments of the Church in England and this country.— TVtte Catholic. 

SPRAGUE.— TRUE AND FALSE RELIGION. 

Lectures illustrating the Contrast between true Christianity and various other 
Systems. By William B. Sprague, D. D. One volume, 12mo., $1 00. 

LECTURES TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 

By W. B. Sprague, D. D. With an Introductory Address, by Samuel Miller, 
D. D. Fourth edition. One volume, 12mo., 88 cents. 

SUTTON.-MEDITATIONS ON THE SACRAMENT. 

Godly Meditations upon the most Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. By 
Christopher Sutton, D. D., late Prebend of Westminster. One volume, 
royal 16mo., elegantly ornamented, $1 00. 
We announced in our last number the republication in this country of Sutton's " Meditations 

on the Lord's Supper," and, having since read the work, are prepared to recommend it warmly and 

without qualification to the perusal of our readers. — Banner of the Cross. 

DISCE MORI— LEARN TO DIE: 

A Religious Discourse, moving every Christian man to enter into a Serious 
Remembrance of his End. By Christopher Sutton, D. D. One volume, 
16mo., $1 00. 

Of the three works of this excellent author lately reprinted, the " Disce Mori " is, in our judg- 
ment, decidedly the best. We do not believe that a single journal or clergyman in the Church 
will be found to say a word in its disparagement. — Churchman. 

: DISCE VIVERE— LEARN TO LIVE: 

Wherein is shown that the Life of Christ is and ought to be an Express Pat- 
tern for Imitation unto the Life of a Christian. By Christopher Sutton, 
D. D. One volume, 16mo., $1 00. 

In the " Disce Vivere," the author moulded his materials, after the manner of a Kempis, into 
an " Imitatio Christi ;" each chapter inculcating some duty, upon the pattern of Him who gave 
Himself to be the beginning and the end of all perfection. — Editor^s Preface. 

SWART.— LETTERS TO MY GODCHILD, 

By the Rev. J. Swart, A. M., of the Diocese of Western New- York. One 
volume, 32mo., cloth, gilt leaves, 38 cents. 
The design of this little work, as expressed by the author in the preface, is, the discharging of 
Sponsorial obligations. We have read it with interest and pleasure, and deem it well fitted to se- 
cure its end. — Primitive Standard. 

SHERLOCK -THE PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN; 

Or, the Devout Penitent ; a Book of Devotion, containing the Whole Duty of 
a Christian in all Occasions and Necessities, fitted to the main use of a holy 
Life. By R. Sherlock, D. D. With a Life of the Author, by the Right 
Rev. Bishop Wilson, Author of " Sacra Privata," &c. One elegant vol- 
ume, 16mo., $1 00. 
Considered as a manual of private devotion, and a means of practical preparation for the Holy 

Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, this book is among the best, if not the best, ever 

commended to the members of our Church. — Churchman. 

SILLIMAN.— A GALLOP AMONG AMERICAN SCENERY; 

Or, Sketches of American Scenes and Military Adventure. By Augustus L. 
Silliman One volume, 16mo., 75 cents. 

21. ^. 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications, 

SHERWOOD— DUTY IS SAFETY; 

Or, Troublesome Tom, by Mrs. Sherwood. One volume, small 4to., illustra- 
ted with wood cuts, cloth, 25 cents. 

THINK BEFORE YOU ACT, 

By Mrs. Sherwood. One volume, small 4to., wood cuts, cloth, 25 cents. 

JACK THE SAILOR-BOY, 

Qy Mrs. Sherwood. One volume, small 4to., wood cuts, cloth, 25 cents. 

Mrs. Sherwood's stories carry with them always such an excellent moral, that no child can read 
them without becoming better. — Philadelphia Enquirer. 

SINCLAIR— SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTCH; 

Or, the Western Circuit. By Catharine Sinclair, author of Modern Accom- 
plishments, Modern Society, &c. &c. One volume, 12mo., 75 cents. 

SHETLAND AND THE SHETLANDERS; 

Or, the Northern Circuit. By Catharine Sinclair, author of Scotland and the 
Scotch, Holiday House, &c. &c. One volume, 12mo., 83 cents. 
The author has proved herself to be a lady of high talent and rich cultivated mind. — JV. Y. Am. 

SMITH— SCRIPTURE AND GEOLOGY; 

On the Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geological 
Science. Eight Lectures. By John Pye Smith, D. D., author of the 
Scripture Testimony of tJie Messiah, &c. &c. One vol., 12mo., ^] 25. 

ADVENTURES OF CAPT. JOHN SMITH, 

The Founder of the Colony of Virginia. By the author of Uncle Philip's 
Conversations. One volume, 18mo., frontispiece, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" Library for my Young Countrymen. " 
It will be read by youth with all the interest of a novel, and certainly with much more profit. 

DISCOURSES ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

Select Discourses on the Functions of the Nervous System, in opposition to 
Phrenology, Materialism, and Atheism ; to which is prefixed a Lecture on 
the Diversities of the Human Character, arising from Physiological Pecu- 
liarities. By John Augustine Smith, M. D. One vol., 12mo., 75 cents. 

PRODUCTIVE FARMING. 

A Familiar Digest of the Most Recent Discoveries of Liebig, Davy, Johnston, 
and other celebrated Writers on Vegetable Chemistry, showing how the 
results of Tillage might be greatly augmented. By Joseph A. Smith. One 
volume, 12mo., paper cover 31 cents, cloth 50 cents. 

SOUTHGATE.— TOUR THROUGH TURKEY 

And Persia. Narrative of a Tour through Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia, and 
Mesopotamia, with an Introduction and Occasional Observations upon the 
Condition of Mohammedanism and Christianity in those countries. By 
the Rev. Horatio Southgate, Missionary of the American Episcopal Church. 
Two volumes, 12nio., plates, $2 00. 

SOUTHEY.-THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

Of Robert Southey, Esq., LL. D. The ten volume London edition in one ele- 
gant volume, royal 8vo., with a fine portrait and vignette, $3 50. 

At the age of sixty-three I have undertaken to collect and edit my poetical works, with the last 
corrections that I can expect to bestow upon them. They have obtained a reputation equal to 
my wishes. * * Thus to collect and revise them is a duty which I owe to that part of the pub- 
lic by whom they have been auspiciously received, and to tliose who will take a lively concern in 
my good name when I shall have departed. — Extract from Author's Preface. 

The beauties of Mr. Southcy's poetry arc such, that this edition can hardly fail to find a place 
in the library of every man fond of elegant literature — Eclectic Revieio 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valiiftble PiibHratioris. 

TAYLOR— THE SACRED ORDER AND OFFICES 

Of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained ; to which is added, Clerus Domini, 
a Discourse on the Office Ministerial, bv the Right Rev. Bishop Jeremy 
Taylor, D. D. One volume, 16mo., $1 00. 

The reprint in a portable form of this eminent divine's masterly defence of Episcopacy, cannot 
fail of being welcomed by every Churchman. 

The publishers have presented this jewel in a fitting casket. — JV*. Y.American. 



THE GOLDEN GROVE: 



A choice Manual, containing what is to be Believed, Practised, and Desired, 
or prayed for ; the Prayers being fitted fur the several Days of the Week. 
To vi^hich is added, a Guide for the Penitent, or a Model drawn up for the 
Help of Devout Souls wounded with Sin. Also, Festival Hymns, &c. By 
the Right Rev. Bishop Jeremy Taylor. One volume, 16mo., 50 cents. 

THE YOUNG ISLANDERS: 

A Tale of the Last Century, by Jefl'erys Taylor. One volume, 16mo., beauti- 
fully illustrated, 75 cents. 

This fascinating and elegantly illustrated volume for the young is pronounced to equal in inte- 
rest De Foe's immortal work, Robinson Crusoe. 



HOME EDUCATION, 



By Isaac Taylor, author of "Natural History of Enthusiasm," &c. &c. Sec- 
ond edition. One volume, 12mo., ^1 00. 
Avery enlightened, just, and Christian view of a most important subject. — Am, Bib. Repos. 

PHYSICAL THEORY 

Of another Life, by Isaac Taylor. Third edition. One vol., 12mo., 83 cents. 
One of the most learned and extraordinary works of modern times. 

SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 

Lectures on Spiritual Christianity, by Isaac Taylor. One vol., 12mo., 75 cents 

The view which this volume gives of Chiistianity,both as a system of truth and a system of 
duty, is in the highest degree instructive. — ilbany Evening Journal. 



NATURAL HISTORY OF SOCIETY 



In the Barbarous and Civilized State. An Essay towards Discovering the 
Origin and Course of Human Improvement, by W. Cooke Taylor, LL. D., 
ifec, of Trinity College, Dublin. Handsomely printed on fine paper. Two 
volumes, 12mo., $2 25. 

THOUGHTS IN PAST YEARS: 

A collection of Poetry, chiefly Devotional, by the author of The Cathedral. 
One volume, 16mo., felegan'tly printed, $1 25. 

TOKEN OF AFFECTION. 

One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. 

FRIENDSHIP. 

One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. 

LOVE. 

One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. * 

REMEMBRANCE. 

One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. 

THE HEART. 

One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. 

Forming a portion of the scries of" Miniature Classical Library." 
Each volume consists of nearly one hundred appropriate extracts fiom the best writers of Eng 
land and America 

23 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

THOMSON-THE SEASONS, 

A Poem, by James Thomson. One vol., 32mo., cloth, gilt leaves, 38 cents. 
Forming one of the series of* Miniature Classical Library." 
Place " The Seasons " in any light, and the poem appears faultless. — S. C. Hall. 

URE— DICTIONARY OF ARTS, 

Manufactures, and Mines, containing a clear Exposition of their Principles and 
Practice. By Andrew Ure, M. D., F. R. S., &c. Illustrated with 1240 
Engravings on wood. One thick volume of 1340 pages, bound in leather, 
$5 00, or in two volumes, $5 50. 

In every point of view, a work like the present can but be regarded as a benefit done to theoret- 
ical and practical science, to commerce and industry, and an important addition to a species of 
literature the exclusive production of the present century, and the present state of peace and civi- 
lization. — AtheiKBum. 

Dr. Ure's Dictionary, of which the American edition is now completed, is a stupendous proof 
of persevering assiduity, combined with genius and taste. For all the benefit of individual enter- 
prise in the practical arts and manufactures, and for the enhancement of general prosperity through 
the extension of accurate knowledge of political economy, we have not any work worthy to be 
compared with this important volume. We are convinced that manufacturers, merchants, trades- 
men, students of natural and experimental philosophy, inventive mechanics, men of opulence, 
members of legislatures, and all who desire to comprehend something of the rapidly accelerating 
progress of those discoveries which facilitate the supply of human wants, and the augmentation 
of social comforts with the national weal, will find this invaluable Dictionary a perennial source 
of salutary instruction and edifying enjoyment. — J^ational Intelligencer. 

VERY LITTLE TALES, 

For Very Little Children, in single Syllables of three and four Letters — first 
series. One volume, square 18mo., numerous illustrations, cloth, 38 cents. 
Second Series, in single Syllables of four and five Letters. One volume, 
square ISmo., numerous illustrations — to match first series — 38 cents. 

WAYLAND— LIMITATIONS OF HUMAN 

Responsibility. By Francis Wayland, D. D. One volume, 18mo., 38 cents. 
Contents. — I. The Nature of the Subject. II. Individual Responsibility. III. Individual 
Responsibility (continued). IV. Persecution on account of Religious Opinions. V. Propagation 
of Truth. VI. Voluntary Associations. VII. Ecclesiastical Associations. VIII. Official Respon- 
sibility. IX. The Slavery Question. 

WILBERFORCE— MANUAL FOR COMMUNICANTS; 

Or, The Order for administering the Holy Communion ; conveniently arrang- 
ed with Meditations and Prayers from old English divines : being the Eu- 
charistica of Samuel Wilberforce, M. A., Archdeacon of Surrey, (adapted 
to the American service.) 38 cents, gilt leaves 50 cents. 
We most earnestly commend the work. — Churchman. 

WILSON.-SACRA PRIVATA. 

The Private Meditations, Devotions, and Prayers of the Right Rev. T. Wil- 
son, D. D., Lord Bishop of Soder and Man. First complete edition. One 
volume, 16mo., elegantly ornamented, $1 00. 

The reprint is an honor to the American press. The work itself is, perhaps, on the whole, the 
best devotional treatise in the language. It has never before in this country been printed entire. 
— Churchman. 

A neat miniature edition, abridged for popular use, is also published. Price 31 cents. 

WOMAN'S WORTH; 

Or, Hints to Raise the Female Character. First American from the last Eng 
lish edition, with a Recommendatory Notice, by Emily Marshall. One 
neat volume, 18mo., cloth gilt 38 cents, paper cover 25 cents. 
The sentiments and principles enforced in this book may be safely commended to the atten- 
tion of women of all ranks. — London Atlas. 

YOUTH'S BOOK OF NATURE; 

Or, The Four Seasons Illustrated, being Familiar Descriptions of Natural His- 
tory, made during Walks in the Country, by Rev. H. B. Draper, Illustra- 
ted with upwards of 50 wood Engravings. One vol., square 16mo., 75 cents. 
One of the most faultless volumes for the voung that has ever been issued.— C*r. R^fleetor. 

'24 



;^ 



D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 

HAVE JUST PUBLISHED, 

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 

ON 

CHRISTIAN MORALS, 

EXPERIMENTAL AND PEACTICAL, 

ORIGINALLY DELIVERED AS LECTURES AT BROADMEAD CHAPEL, BRISTOL, 

BY JOHN FOSTER. 

One Volume, 18mo. of near 300 pages, 50 cents. 

This volume contains twenty-six subjects : I. The New Year. 
II. Spring and its Moral Attributes. — III. Autumn and its Moral Attri- 
butes. — IV. Winter and its Moral Attributes — V. Supreme Attachment 
due to Spiritual Objects. — VI. Spiritual Freedom produced by know- 
ledge of the Truth. — VII. Christ, though invisible, the object of devout 
affection. — VIII. Fallacies operating against Earnestness in Religion. 
IX. Earnestness in Religion enforced. — X. Comprehensiveness of the Di- 
vine Law. — XI. Self-Discipline suitable to certain Mental States.— XII. 
Characteristics of Vain Thoughts. — XIII. Correctives of Vain Thoughts. 
XIV. Necessity and Right Method of Self-Examination. — XV.Uses and Per- 
version of Conscience. — XVI. Formality and Remissness in Prayer. — XVII. 
"Watchfulness and Prayer. — XVIII. Sober-Mindedness. — XIX. False 
Grounds of Superiority in Holiness. — XX. Right Mode of giving and receiv- 
ing Reproof. — XXI. Noah and the Deluge. — XXII. Destruction of Sodom 
and Gomorrah. — XXIII. Elijah's Sacrifice and the Priests of Baal. — 
XXIV. Ignorance of our Mode of Future Existence. — XXV. Christian 
Doctrine of the Perfectibility of Man. — XXVI. End of the Year. 

The renowned Essayist, by the request of his friends, delivered at Bris- 
tol some years since a series of Lectures which are now issued under the 
title of Essays. The volume comprises twenty-six topics, combining in 
an unusual degree both novelty and variety. Among the attractive works 
of more recent publication this ranks of the very superior order. It is 
issued as a pocket companion and as the disquisitions are both concise 
and animating, few books can be named which are more suited to arrest 
the attention of the traveller and to occupy the occasional leisure of the 
store and counting room. For youth, and Sabbath school and district Li- 
braries, probably not one book of its class can be selected which has 
stronger claims than this volume. 



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